
BRARY OF CONGRESS, i 



Chap. .:3y,±3s^ I 



^ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. | 



^^^jMMjjjl 



THE 



FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES OF THE CHURCH 



VINDICATED FROM 



ALL AFFINITY WITH METHODISM 



IN A REVIEW 



OF THE LETTER OF THE REV. J. P. DURBIN, D. D., ASSERTING 
THEIR IDENTITY. 



BY WM. HERBERT NORRIS, M. A., 

RECTOR OF ST. JOHN's CHURCH, CARLISLE, PA. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

GEORGE & WAYNE, 26 SOUTH FIFTH STREET. 

1844. 



''!■ V 



KING AND BAIRD, PRlNTERSj 9 GEORGE STREET. 



" I protest and openly confess, that in all my doctrine and preaching, both of 
the Sacrament and of other my doctrine, whatsoever it be, not only I mean and 
judge those things as the Catholic Church and the most holy fathers of old, with one 
accord, have meant and judged, but also I would gladly use the same words that 
they used, and not use any other words, but to set my hands to all and singular 
their speeches, phrases, ways, and forms of speech, which they do use in their 
treatises upon the Sacrament, and to keep still their interpretation." 

Archbishop Cranmeb, Appeal at his Degradation. • 



" The Sacraments of Baptism and of His Holy Supper, if we rightly use the 
same, do most assuredly certify us, that we be partakers of His Godly Nature, 
having given unto us by Him immortality and life everlasting, and so is Christ, 
naturally in us. And so we be one with Christ, and Christ with us, not only in 
will and mind, but also in very natural properties" 

Cranmer, Remains, v. ii. p. 407. 

"You flee from the four proper matters that be in controversy unto a new 
scope devised by you that I should absolutely deny the presence of Christ, 
and say that the Bread doth only signify Christ's Body absent, which thing I 
iTEVER SAID NOR THOUGHT. And as Christ saith not so, nor Paul saith not so> 
then so likewise I say not so, and my book in divers places saith clean contrary." 

lb. V. iii. p. 40. 



" And yet the Bread is changed, not in shape nor substance, but in nature, as 
Cyprian truly saith, not meaning that the natural substance of bread is clear 
gone, but that by God's Word there is added thereto another higher property, 
nature and condition. ... So that now the said mystical Bread is both a corporal 
food for the body and a spiritual food for the soul." 

lb. V. ii. p. 340. Jenkyns' Edition. 



REVIEW. 



The same reasons which led me in the first instance to give a 
pubHc and pointed contradiction to Dr. Durbin's assertion of the 
identity of the fundamental doctrines taught respectively by the 
Methodists and the Church of England, induce me to notice the 
Letter, which purports to be a reply to the one I addressed to him. 
My object was then simply to correct the erroneous opinions to 
which he had given currency, and which I found were beheved on 
his authority ; my purpose now is the same. The letter is not less 
calculated to lead ill-informed persons astray from the truth than 
his public discourses. 

When I learned that Dr. Durbin had proposed to deliver a 
discourse on what he and others think fit to call " Puseyism," 
I felt nowise anxious ; nor did I imagine that I should ever be 
called upon to notice anything he might choose to say on such a 
subject. Even after I had known of his extraordinary assertion 
of the identity of Methodism with the Church, in respect of the 
three fundamental points discussed by him, I felt equally indiffer- 
ent about the matter, and expressed my indifference to others. 
It did not for once occur to me that any one would believe what 
was so notoriously otherwise, even though it had been said by 
the Rev. and dignified President of Dickinson College. I thought, 
but as it seems toa hastily, that our Book of Common Prayer 
was at least as well known in this community as Dr. Durbin ; 
and accordingly I took it for granted, that any one who might 
choose to form an opinion on the subject, would examine the 
very plain language of that book, and judge for himself of the 
extravagance of his statements. Even if a person uncatechised 
in the faith of the Church, and with a mind preoccupied by an 

antagonist system, should not be able to understand all he might 

1# 



see in our Prayer Book, and know, for example, what was 
meant by Regeneration in Baptism ; still he could see that such 
a doctrine was therein taught most distinctly ; and seeing that, he 
would know of course, that on such fundamental points as the 
New Birth of the Gospel, and Justification, the Church must be 
at the farthest remove from Methodism, as inculcating a religi- 
ous system, not merely unlike the latter, but heterogeneous to 
it. But unhappily, 1 discovered that this very obvious way of 
arriving at a just judgment in so important a case, was over- 
looked by some for whom I naturally felt a deep concern. I 
had therefore no alternative. An imperious sense of duty 
obliged me to contradict with proofs, the erroneous notions pro- 
claimed by Dr. Durbin. I could not degrade my pulpit with 
such a controversy, even so far as therein to take the remotest 
notice either of Methodism, or of Dr. Durbin's assertions ; and my 
only course, was to address him publicly on the subject. 

I am not surprised to find that I have made him uneasy : nor 
to hear his dolorous complaints, not simply on account of the 
manner in which I expressed myself, but because I joined issue 
with him on his assertion, that Methodism was identical with the 
Church system on the three points he discussed. He seems to 
think, that I ought rather to have entered upon a regular defence 
of the writings of certain divines of Oxford ; and thus to have 
obtruded my assistance not only where it was not needed, but 
where it would have been highly indelicate, and perhaps injuri- 
ous to them. I beg to say then, that under no circumstances 
could I engage in such a controversy with Dr. Durbin. He 
might have preached his lifetime out on the writings of Dr. 
Pusey and Mr. Newman, without having been troubled with a 
word from me. The little that I did say of those divines, in my 
Letter, was drawn from me by the fact that their names and 
writings are, against their own will, made a 'touchstone of 
opinion,' and are identified with principles which are the com- 
mon heritage of every member of the Church; so that unhappily 
it is almost impossible effectually to assert and maintain those 
principles as the property of the Church, without appearing to be 
the advocate of men. Nor again, if Dr. Durbin, like his brother 
Wesleyans in England, had denounced our Church for her erro- 



neous teaching, would I have cared to give him a word of reply. 
I should have felt satisfied that her own reputation was her all 
sufficient defence. But indeed I could not treat his proffered 
compliments with the same calm indifference. Our people are 
not used to attacks by such weapons, by sugared pills of poison. 
And therefore, even at the risk of being charged with arrogance, I 
was forced to hand him back his compliments. But hereupon I 
am told, with admirable naivete, 

"A good Christian would have thought that the declaration of a strict agreement 
between the Methodist Episcopal and Protestant Episcopal churches on three 
fundamental points of Christianity would have gratified your pride, if not edified 
your apostolic charity." 

Now granting that I may be chargeable with pride, still one 
is at a loss to conceive how it possibly could be gratified by 
hearing that we bore any affinity with Methodism ; and as to 
"apostolic charity," I have learned from St. Paul, that that greatest 
of the Christian graces * rejoices' only 'in the truth.' No matter 
then what was or was not " dreamed" by Dr. Durbin ; eve-n sup- 
posing his "christian communion of more than a million mem- 
bers" were ten times its present size, and " three years older^^ 
{risum teneatis amici ?) than that of which I am an unworthy 
servant, the case would not be in the slightest degree altered. It 
would not be true that the Methodists are agreed with the church 
in her faith ; and " apostolic charity" would rather be grieved 
than edified, at hearing such statements as those which he has 
hazarded. The church in the United States is nowise ashamed 
of being a " little flock." She would have cause to suspect her- 
self wanting in some notes of Apostolicity, were she popular 
with the world ; because " as He is, so are we, in this world ;" 
" the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not." 

All therefore that Dr. Durbin says about my " changing the 
issue," and " making a new issue," amounts to nothing more 
than an unconscious confession, that he has taken too much upon 
himself in asserting the agreement of Methodism with the Church, 
in fundamentals. I made no issue whatever, new or old ; I simply 
joined with him in an issue made by himself. He made the 
statement which I have combated, publicly, in his " own proper" 
person ; whether incidentally or not, is nothing to me. It was 7iot 
therefore " discourteous" in me to address him " publicly," in 



8 

order to disprove what he said. Whether it was necessary or 
not to do so, I am the judge and not he. Neither can it be 
" unfair" nor " uncandid" under any circumstances to controvert 
error by means of truth — Dr. Durbin's complaints to the contrary 
notwithstanding. 

Of course I have nothing to do with his motives in dehvering 
his unfortunate discourses ; and I only notice what he says of 
them, to direct attention to a secret which he has divulged, and 
which a well judging public never would have guessed at. He 
writes to me, 

" The 'Oxford teaching' which you had stealthily* and gradually introduced into 
the community here, together with the general excitement in the Protestant 
churches, led, without my knowledge, to a resolution of the leaders' meeting of 
our Church, requesting me to deliver a series of discourses on the Oxford doc- 
trines." 

Here we are gravely informed that this mock-Vatican con- 
clave, " the leaders' meeting," undertook the presentation of me 
and my official ministrations, to the notice of the Rev. Doctor in 
Divinity, the President of Dickinson College, for the sake of en- 
gaging him to lift his puissant arm against me. It would have 
been well for him had he simply told his " leaders' meeting " to 
give heed to St. Paul's advice, " to study to be quiet and to do their 
own business," instead of lending himself to be the mouth-piece of 
their impertinence. And to do him nothing less than justice, it 
becomes me to acknov/ledge that he did " hesitate" before he 
proceeded to act upon their presentation. But the " leaders" 
were not to be so easily put off; they urged that many besides 
their own congregation desired his action in this matter. " Still 
he hesitated." He ^received several messages from respectable 
citizens asking his compliance;' and ' one gentleman not a Metho- 
dist called on him personally ;' at last this interesting coquetry 
ended, by his yielding a qualified assent to the urgent suit, 
because he was " unwilling to awaken religious controversy in 
the community." His discourses therefore, despite the load of 
apologies they contained, and the disclaimers of a direct condem- 
nation of any thing or any body, were yet aimed at me person- 

* It cannot be expected that I should make any reply to this gratuitous insult, 
especially since it loses all point in being supremely ridiculous. 



9 

ally and at my official teaching. All this unlocked for information 
chimes in, most harmoniously to be sure, with his complaint. 

"To attempt to give the controversy a personal bearing by addressing your 
pamphlet to me in my own proper name and office, to say the least, was unne- 
cessary and discourteous." 

Again, he seems to think it strange that I should have replied 
to " reported statements.^' My justification is, that I knew the 
report I used, to be true. The knowledge I acted on, was de- 
rived from half-a-dozen independent sources, each one giving 
concordant testimony to the fact, that he had asserted the identity 
of Methodism with the Church's doctrine, on three fundamental 
points. I acted upon the highest moral certainty. Dr. Durbin's 
hand and seal would not have added strength to the convic- 
tion. If my information had proved false, then there might have 
been some ground for complaint, and I should have been a fair 
mark for sarcasm. But since it was true ; since he confesses its 
truth, and writes a pamphlet to prove those very reported state- 
ments which I criticised and denied ; it betrays something like the 
petulance of a spoiled child, for him to refer in the manner he 
does to the sources of my information. It would at least have 
been more manly in him to have stood by his declaration with- 
out any of this pitiful ado. 

He is also much aggrieved because I stated a matter of fact, that 
"there were those among his hearers who were scandalized by 
the manifest misrepresentations which his readings imposed upon 
his uninformed hearers." (See my letter, p. 29.) Now this cer 
tainly is a fact whether those persons were justly scandalized or 
not. Be it observed however, that I was careful not to impeach 
his character in this statement. I assumed that he had not him- 
self made the quotations which he used ; but, that he read them 
from a " little book" purporting to be a " confutation of Pusey- 
ism ;" to which book he had given an undue confidence ; and 
therefore, that he deceived others only because he had been 
in the first instance deceived himself. The quotations I adduced 
from Ridley were made to show, how easily such a book might 
have been constructed. I may, however, have been more charita- 
ble to Dr. Durbin than just ; at least, the startling developments of 
his capacity for misrepresentation, which are found in his Letter, 
would suggest such a conclusion. Of these I shall say nothing 



10 

at present. They will be brought to Hght in the course of my 
remarks. 

I proceed now to an examination of the means which Dr. 
Durbin has used to overthrow my former arguments, and to 
establish his original assumption of the identity of Methodism 
and the Church's doctrine, on the Rule of Faith, the means of 
Justification, and the Eucharist. 

1. Or THE Rule of Faith.* — Dr. Durbin begins his discussion 
of this point with a very imposing air. He publishes our Vlth 
Article and the corresponding Methodist Article, side by side, and 
then triumphantly asks me, "Are they not identical ? How then 
could you publish to the world that they are opposed ?'' The 
simple answer is that I did not "publish to the world that they 
are opposed'^ in their letter ; but that he gave an interpretation to 
the Vlth Article which the XXth would not warrant ; and which 
the discipline of the church and her uniform practice denied. My 
words were these : — 

" You read our Vlth Article so as to make it exclude the authority and tradi- 
tion of the Church Catholic from having any interference in the Church's Rule 
of Faith for individuals. In the first place I deny that the Article makes any 
such exclusion : for itself appeals to tradition to support its own decision as to the 
character of the apocryphal books. . . Secondly, the XXth Article declares that the 
Church hath authority in controversies of faith, and presupposes her paramount 
right to expound Scripture, by saying that she ought not to decree any thing against 
the same, nor besides the same, to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of 
salvation. The whole of this article also the Methodists from the necessities of 
their condition have rejected."- 

Now the ground here taken is extremely simple. It is assumed 
that the Vlth and XXth Articles, which are both constituent 
portions of one document, are consistent with each other, and 
Tnusf be so interpreted. It was not only granted, but maintained 
by me, that the Church requires nothing to be believed as an 
Article of the faith but what may be proved by Holy Scripture ; 
this is the injunction of the Vlth Article ; but does this deny, or is 
it anywise inconsistent with the fact, that the Church demands of 

* Let it be noted that our Church has nowhere used this phrase, " the Rule of 
Faith." She does not say that Scripture is the Rule, nor the " only Rule ;" neither 
does she say that Tradition is a rule. She asserts simply that Scripture con- 
tains all things necessary to salvation ; and besides that she imposes a Creed, one 
Article of which is, " I believe one Catholic and Apostolic Church." 



11 

her members submission to the faith she teaches, and which she 
maintains may be proved by Holy Scripture ? Methodists may 
indeed read their Article as it suits them, and make it exclude 
all creeds; but with us it is happily quite different: for in the 
interpretation of the Vlth Article we are bound to heed the XXth 
also, which asserts the Church's " authority in controversies of 
faith f^ and her right to eTi/orce certain truths to he believed for 
necessity of salvation, if they are susceptible of scriptural 
proof But who is the judge of this proof? The Church does 
not enter into disputes with her children. She does not stoop to 
the work of bandying texts of Scripture with the misbelieving. 
Suppose then, that one of her ministers or members should refuse 
to abide by the Nicene formula {o^oqv^iov) " consubstantial,'' on the 
ground that he could find no such word in Scripture, (and this 
was the very position of the Arians) ; would his private judg- 
ment, or would the Vlth Article, save him from excommunica- 
tion ? Certainly not ; for the Church has ruled (Art. VIII.) that 
the Nicene Creed may be proved by most certain warrants of 
Holy Scripture — the Arian's private judgment to the contrary 
notwitstanding. 

It is really irksome to multiply words on a point so very plain 
as this. The Church does claim and exercise authority in con- 
troversies of faith. Her Creed is a rule of faith to her members, 
for she imposes it upon them to be believed. To assent to the 
authority and inspiration of Holy Scripture is not her only term 
of communion. The Arian may, and does do that, and so do 
many others with whom she holds no communion, whose creed 
varies from hers. As she knows but one Lord, so she acknow- 
ledges but One Body, One Faith, and One Baptism. She requires 
of those who seek her Baptism in order to gain membership in 
the one Body, the obligation, that they shall believe all the 
Articles of that one Faith. She moreover prescribes a form of 
daily worship and offices for the administration of the Sacra- 
ments, which appointments are binding on her clergy. In those 
formularies her creed is developed, and is thereby still further 
imposed on her worshipping members under the most solemn 
sanctions. They are required to address Almighty God in her 
prayers ; and those prayers are so constructed, I repeat, as to be 



12 

at the same time confessions of her faith — confessions (would 
that we all might think of it !) which are made to Almighty 
God, the searcher of hearts, the judge of men. It is, I say, under 
such awful circumstances as these, that her members are obliged 
to confess to God^ the truth of the doctrines taught in her daily 
service, in her office for Baptism, and in the Liturgy of the Holy 
Communion — doctrines which it is the fashion of the day to decry, 
doctrines as old as the Church, and which the Methodists and 
many others have repudiated and denounced as " Popery'^ and 
" Puseyism !" Is there not here a most serious interference with 
her members, in the formation of their belief? Is not her definite 
creed thus made a rule for their faith from lisping infancy to ex- 
tremest age? This Creed is her authoritative tradition. It is 
handed down {traditur) from Bishop to Bishop, from generation 
to generation. She claims that it is " the faith once delivered to 
the saints." The time cannot be named when she cannot prove 
it to have been believed throughout the Catholic Church. It did 
not originate in the sixteenth century ; for her chief documents 
and devotions in which it is expressed, were in use in the Church 
before the Reformation. It has been received " always, every 
where, and by all ;" it is therefore the Catholic Faith ; the same 
faith by which the lives of the saints were moulded, and which 
supported her Confessors and Martyrs under their fiery trials. 

It is quite astonishing how any one can deny that the Church 
does impose and enforce her "authorhative traditional creed" 
upon her members, as a rule for their individual faith, when 
it is a fact visible to one's eyes, and seen every day, every 
where and by every body. The prescribed discipline of the 
Church, moreover, ought surely to be regarded as the best 
exponent of her avowed principles ; and the same remark may 
also be made with respect to the Methodist communion. A 
comparison of the practices of the two will therefore show what 
has been elsewhere proved, to wit, the essential difference in 
their principles in regard to this vital point. Now with us a 
Creed, and consequently a Christian profession, are imposed 
upon infants ; and that before they are conscious of so great a 
blessing. These questions e. g. are put to the sponsors in Baptism — 
" Dost thou [in the name of this child] believe all the Articles of 



13 

the Christian faith as contained in the Apostles' Creed ?" " Wilt 
thou be baptized in this faith .?" An answer in the affirmative 
is made a condition of the gift of regeneration. The Methodists, 
on the other hand, having no authoritative Creed, and differing 
from us essentially as to what Baptism is, have rejected this 
feature of our office; and consequently, they commit themselves 
to a practice, as anti-catholic, as it is anti-Scriptural, of conferring 
baptism without imposing a Creed, without any profession of 
faith on the part of the candidate, without any obligation being 
imposed upon him whatever. And yet with this astounding 
circumstance before their eyes, persons can be bold enough to say 
that Methodists are agreed with the Church in her fundamental 
principles ! Moreover, a catechism is prescribed by the church 
for the instruction Of her children in the faith, and which they 
they are to be taught so soon as they can learn it ; and that is 
before they are able to exercise their private judgment upon 
Scripture. Here then, the teaching of the Church is a rule for 
them antecedent to all personal knowledge of Scripture. So 
soon as they are sufficiently instructed in the catechism, they are 
to be brought to the Bishop to be confirmed ; at which time they 
publicly recognize the obligations which were imposed on them 
" in Baptism, wherein they were made members of Christ and 
children of God" — obligations which rest upon the gift of re- 
generation, and the gracious relation of Sonship. Is it not 
therefore seen, how the blessed authority and protection of the 
Church is extended over her children, so as to " bring them up in 
the nurture and admonition of the Lord," and to save them from 
the great misery of ever being obliged to choose a religion ? Is 
it not seen, I ask again, how her Creed is made a rule of their 
faith ? But the practice of the Methodists is as difterent as pos- 
sible from this. Their baptized children are not recognized as 
Church members. They have rejected our Church catechism, be- 
cause it is utterly antagonistic to their religion ; they have no rite 
to which they give the name of Confirmation, thus abandoning 
one of the " first principles of the doctrine of Christ," (Heb. vi. 
1) ; and in baptizing infants, as I have said, they neither impose 
upon them any Creed, nor require that they shall be brought up 
in the belief of any thing whatever. They are thus emphatic- 



14 

ally left to themselves, to their own wills, or to the religious 
whims of their parents ; to their own private judgment, to be- 
lieve nothing or any thing as it may suit them ; to construct such 
a creed from Scripture as shall please themselves, or to become 
infidels outright. And yet the Methodists call themselves "a 
Church !" 

I have doubtless said enough on this point ; but as I am anx- 
ious to leave nothing unsaid, I cannot forego the exhibition of 
some farther documentary evidence. My appeal now shall be 
to the vows which are imposed on our Candidates for the Holy 
Order of Priests. The Methodists have partly followed us here, 
and partly not ; and the alterations which they have made will, 
by the contrast, reveal their point of departure from our princi- 
ples. They agree with us in exacting a vow corresponding to 
the Vlth Article ; as this by itself, would not exhibit the ground 
taken by the Church, so the Ordinal has a vow answering to the 
XXth Article ; and this the Methodists have consistently altered 
to correspond with their rejection of that Article. I place them 
side by side. 



raOM THE METHODIST DISCIPLINE. 

Will you then give your faithful dili- 
gence always so to minister the doctrine 
and Sacraments and discipline of Christ 
as the Lord hath commanded 1 



FROM THE CHURCH ORDHSTAL. 

Will you then give your faithful dili- 
gence, always so to minister the doctrine 
and the Sacraments and the discipline of 
Christ, as the Lord hath commanded, 
and as this Church hath received the same, 
according to the commandments of God; 
so that you may teach the people com- 
mitted to your cure and charge, with all 
diligence to keep and observe the same? 

From this example is seen on the one hand, professed obedi- 
ence to the authoritative teaching of the church ; and on the 
other hand, a loose rein given to the individual's will and private 
judgment. The Methodists, as it were, in bitterest irony of 
themselves, do not dare to impose their creed and discipline as 
that which the Lord hath commanded. In our Ordinal provi- 
sion is made for the security of the laity. If the Priests not only 
profess, but pay implicit submission to the authority and teaching 
of the Church, the people are in no danger of being led off by 



15 

their pastors into heresy and schism. They will be saved from 
the ignominy of being disciples of men ; from the self-condemn- 
ing reproach of bearing any such name as '' Wesleyans." Had 
John Wesley been faithful to the vow which he made before the 
altar of his God, he would not have been the founder of a schism ; 
there never would have been any such body known, as the 
" Methodist Episcopal Church." 

But I have another witness. In the order for the consecration 
of Bishops, the candidate is required to make the following awful 
oath : 

" In the name of God, Amen. I N. chosen Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church in N. do promise conformity and obedience to the doctrine, discipline and 
worship of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America : So 
help me God through Jesus Christ." 

The Methodists, with unswerving consistency to their principles 
and circumstances, exact nothing like this from their " Bishops." 

It was with the knowledge of all these solemn vows which 
rest upon our Bishops and Priests, that I took the liberty of thus 
expressing on p. 27 of my Letter, what he chooses to regard 
as my " fear of the great weight of living authority in the 
Church :" 

.*<Any one who can construe English, and has thel consideration to take for 
granted that the solemn addresses to Almighty God in our ritual, are not com- 
posed in equivocal language, and that our catechism, designed for the instruction 
of the simple and unsophisticated minds of little children in the Christian Faith 
is not made up of riddles ; will be at no loss in deciding who occupy the Church's 
ground, who consistently maintain her principles, who really do not teach her 
faith, and not their own opinions. For it is neither present popularity, nor high 
station that can give any individuals the title of being legitimate expounders of the 
Church's faith: but professed and proved submission to the teaching of the Church." 

Fear indeed! such language looks like it, forsooth. Further- 
more, Dr. Durbin has the assurance to make the following start- 
ling assertion in reference to the last sentence of the passage : 
— " This a very convenient way of disposing of three-fourths of 
your own Bishops including your own diocesan, who have de- 
clared against you in America, and of a greater proportion in 
England." In other words, Dr. Durbin thinks that three fourths 
of the American Bishops and a greater proportion of the English, 
have forsworn themselves, by denying that they owe obedience 



16 

to the doctrine of the Church ! And because I say that " professed 
and proved submission to the teaching of the Church/' is neces- 
sary to their being recognized as " legitimate expounders of the 
Church's faith," I dispose of their authority ! Dr. Durbin has 
incautiously published a calumny against our Bishops. I cannot 
believe that he was aware of the vows which are upon them, 
when in his anxiety to ^'dispose'' of me, he penned that amazing 
sentence. It is not true that three-fourths of our Bishops have 
declared against any point that I have maintained. On the con- 
trary it is well known that I am supported by a large majority. 
But certain it is that there is a very serious controversy going on 
in the church; certain it is, that two rival and antagonist theo- 
logical systems are contending for the upper hand now, as in the 
days of the original puritans. Both cannot be the property of 
the Church ; and the advocates of each cannot be really obeying 
the doctrine of the Church. One or the other must be in the 
wrong ; and yet I will not believe but that all unfeignedly sup- 
pose that they are submitting ex animo to the Church's teaching. 
These are days of confusion and mental distraction. The Church 
is awaking out of the stupor of the eighteenth century, brought 
upon her by the loss, in one dire moment, of her most learned 
and faithful clergy, under the measures of that bloodstained and 
impure villain William III ; by the lifeless latitudinarian teaching 
of his creatures Tillotson, Burnet, and the like ; and by the bond- 
age she is under to the civil power ; all which evils affect the 
Church in this country, for we are all members of one Body, and 
have common nerves. It will not do then to judge men too 
strictly for the sins of their fathers ; and the most that it becomes 
one to say is that the " fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the 
children's teeth are set on edge." At all events, this is plain, 
and it may be said without judging the character of any body : 
the advocates of one of these rival systems are loud in calling for 
submission to the teaching of the Church ; the advocates of the 
other (Dr. Durbin being witness) reclaim against any such de- 
mand, and m.aintain that their "private judgment" is a higher 
rule for them than the Faith of the Church. Here is the point; there 
is no dispute as to the supreme authority of Holy Scripture, no 
question as to its containing all doctrine necessary to salvation ; 



17 

but the debate is, as to whether the individual's interpretation 
shall countervail, and even set aside that interpretation which the 
Church gives, which she has always maintained, and which is 
identical with her " authoritative traditional faith.'^ Let then the 
impartial observer say which of these contending parties, judging 
them by these their own acts, have the most rightful claim to be 
recognized as legitimate expounders of the Church's faith. At all 
events, Dr. Durbin will surely not venture in future to cite against 
me or any one else, the authority of any Bishop whom he be- 
lieves to have declared against " submission to the teaching of the 
Church ;" because such authority must be ipso facto no authority 
at all. I cannot, however, answer for the propriety of one who 
charges me with departing from the doctrine of the Church, 
because I maintain the paramount authority of that doctrine ; 
who places that authority below the right which he thinks we 
all have to form our own religious opinions, and at the same 
time exalts before me (p. 3S) the authority of particular indi- 
viduals " who ought rightfully to control my opinions !" Cer- 
tainly this is well done, for an advocate of the individual's rightful 
independence of Church authority, Catholic tradition, and Creeds, 
in the formation of his belief and opinions. I beg to say that the 
clergy and laity of the Church know of no such bondage as that 
which Dr. Durbin thinks I '^ oughV^ to know and feel ^'to some 
extent at least." To no extent, I answer. Those of us who 
know what are their privileges in the Church, are able to rejoice 
in a freedom which is not to be found except within her pale, 
and by submission to her divinely constituted authority ; freedom 
from self-will and the " itching ear," (2 Tim. iv. 3), freedom 
"from all false doctrine, heresy and schism," freedom which 
the Church only can bestow, and which the " pillar and ground 
of the Truth, the Church of the Living God" (1 Tim. iii. 15) 
only can guarantee. For " if the truth shall make you free, ye 
shall be free indeed." 

The word " tradition" is a great scarecrow in certain quarters ; 
and by the help of some coarse language in our first Homily, 
which Dr. Durbin seems to delight in, he has no doubt, made it 
appear more offensive than is common. He has thus shown his 
usual cleverness in saying things for effect. From what has 



IS 

been said on pp._^8 and 9 of my Letter, together with what is 
here submitted,* my meaning of the word may be gathered ; and 
an examination of our Homilies will show that they make quite 
as much use of tradition as I am disposed to do, and the same 
use. By some people the word is supposed to mean hearsay 
rumors carried from mouth to mouth. But such tradition is 
repudiated by all Church writers ; such is not the Catholic 
Creed, nor Catholic Tradition ; such is not the testimony of the 
Holy Fathers and Saints and Martyrs of the Church, to " the 
truth as it is in Jesus.'^ It is not to such testimonies as these 
that the first Homily refers when it speaks of the " stinking 
puddles of men's traditions devised hy men^s imaginations.^^ The 
doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the Incarnation, as 
defined by the General Councils of the Church, are Catholic tra- 
ditions. The very Homily from which Dr. Durbin's taste 
selected the above sentence, appeals to tradition, by referring to 
the teaching of the "great clerk and godly preacher St. John 
Chrysostom.'^ The authority and teaching of more than forty 
of the Fathers is constantly appealed to by the Homilies as that 
which we ought to follow. They say that "the Primitive 
Church is specially to be followed as most incorrupt and pure,'^ 
(2 B. ii. pt. 3.) and they speak of those six councilst which were 

* For some observations on the Right of private judgment and kindred mat- 
ters see Appendix A. 

f To wit, Nice, A. D. 325. Constantinople, A. D. 381. Ephesus, A. D. 431. 
Chalcedon, A. D. 451. Constantinople, A. D. 553. Constantinople, A. D. 680. 

In this connection it will be instructive to consider the following extracts from 
the credentials furnished our delegates to the Oriental Church, as showing both 
whom we regard as members of the Catholic family, and what we acknowledge 
as the true basis of Catholic communion. 

"The arrogant assumptions of universal supremacy and infallibility, of the 
Papal head of the Latin Church, render the prospect of speedy and friendly 
intercourse with him dark and discouraging. The Church in the United States 
of America, therefore, looking to the Triune God for His blessings upon its efforts 
for unity in the Body of Christ, turns with hope to the patriarch of Constanti- 
nople, the spiritual head of the ancient and venerable Oriental Church." 

« They [the delegates] will make it clearly understood that their church has 

. BO ecclesiastical connexion with the followers of Luther and Calvin, and 

takes no part in their plans or operations to diffuse the principles of their sects." 

Again — " they will present themselves ... to the patriarch of Constantinople, 



19 

allowed and received of all men. {lb. pt. 2.) Dr. Durbin's cita- 
tion from the first Homily is therefore quite gratuitous. His 
application of the words '^ stinking puddles/' &c., to the tradi- 
tion which I have maintained is a gross misrepresentation of the 
Homily. His request that T should read that Homily in my 
Church is excessively rude, and so is his invitation to me to re-, 
view my ordination vows. Again, when he speaks of my using 
" the authoritative words of the Roman Catholic Church in 
defining tradition," viz. as " that which has been believed always 
every where, and by all ;" and says that I thereby show clearly 
that I receive tradition as a rule of faith in the same sense as 
that Church ;" he proves that he does not know what he is 
writing about. Those words are the original words of a writer 
who lived in the early part of the fifth century. They are taken 
from the Comtoonitory of St. Vincent of Lerins and are univer- 
sally referred to by theologians as the " Canon of Vincentius."* 
Equally absurd is it to say, that I hold tradition in the same 
sense as the Roman Catholic Church; for if I did, I could not but 
be a Roman Catholic, I could not but acknowledge the Creed of 

inviting him to a friendly correspondence with the heads of the Church in the 
United States, explaining more fully the views and objects of their Church, and 
inquiring whether a mutual recognition of each other can be effected, as mem- 
bers of the Catholic Church of Christ, on the basis of Holy Scriptures and the 
first covMcils, including the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, in order to a future 
efficient co-operation against Paganism, false religion and Judaism." Dated 2d 
January, 1843, and signed by the late Senior Bishop Griswold, and by the Bishops 
of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Missouri, and Pennsylvania. 

* St. Vincent's words are worth heeding. "Inquiring often with great desire 
and attention of very many excellent holy and learned men, how and by what 
means I might assuredly, and as it were by some general and ordinary way, dis- 
cern the true Catholic faith from false and wicked heresy ; to this question I had 
usually this answer from them all, that whether I or any other desired to find 
out the fraud of heretics daily springing up, and to escape their snares, and 
willingly would continue in a sound faith, himself safe and sound, that he ought 
two manner of ways by God's assistance to defend and preserve his faith; that is, 
first, by the authority of the law of God ; secondly, by the tradition of the 
Catholic Church." 

"Again, within the Catholic Church itself we are greatly to consider that we 
hold that which hath been believed every where, always and of all men; for that is 
truly and properly Catholic (as the very force and nature of the word doth declare) 
which comprehendeth all things in general after an universal manner, and that 



20 

Pope Pius and the Council of Trent, I could not but maintain that 
there are articles of faith found elsewhere than in Holy Scripture, 
viz., as the Council of Trent says, in " unwritten traditions.'^ 
But it seems that some how or other, right or wrong, I am to be 
proved not only a " Papist," but something worse. He says : 

"You show clearly that you receive tradition in the same sense as that Church 
and even in a stronger sense, for you say, (p. 20) ' There is no more discordance 
in the tradition of the Church Catholic in respect of this principle than of God's 
existence.^ Verily this is strange language in a Protestant community." 

Verily, I reply, to do as Dr. Durbin has here done, is stranger 
conduct in a community that expects men to have at least 
some regard for truth. How could he have the hardihood 
to take those words of mine which I used in speaking of the 
Incarnation and Salvation by the " Word made flesh," and give 
out that I thus spoke of tradition. Here is the connexion in 
which those words occur. 

"Your founders did not believe that our fallen human nature is cleansed by 
the glorified and divine human nature of Christ, that, ' our sinful bodies are 
made clean by His Body,'' that the latter gives us life even as Adam's gave us 
death. On this principle, Rev. Sir, is built the sublime Theology of the Catholic 
Church, this is the great exponent of her teaching as it has come down tons from 
Apostolic days, and been proclaimed with one moQth in every section of the 
Apostolic family in every age. There is no more discordance in the tradition of 
the Church Catholic in respect of this principle than of God's existence." 

It has been observed that I have made use of the first clause of 
our XXth Article — " The Church hath power to decree rites and 
ceremonies and authority in controversies of faith;" and in my Let- 
ter I appealed also to a well known Canon of 1571. The authority 
of both these Dr. Durbin has impeached, and, in his own opinion, 
has overthrown. It is my duty therefore to defend them. First, 
of the disputed clause of the Article. I remark then, that grant- 
ing its spuriousness, nothing is gained ; for the latter portion of 
the Article assumes the paramount right of the Church to expound 

shall we do if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. Universality shall we fol- 
low thus, if we profess that one faith to be true which the whole Church through- 
out the world acknowledgeth and confesseth. Antiquity shall we follow if we 
depart not any whit from those senses which it is plain that our holy elders and 
fathers generally held. Consent shall we likewise follow, if in this very anti- 
quity itself we hold the definitions and opinions of all or at any rate almost all 
the priests and doctors together." 



21 

Scripture and to " ew/orce" certain things " to be believed for 
necessity of salvation.'^ Secondly, supposing the clause to have 
been originally an interpolation, it has become authoritative by 
the sanction of the Church. Before the Convocation of 1603, 
(as has been the case ever since) the Article, as it now stands, 
was received as one of the XXXIX Articles of 1562. So much 
then settles its present authority. Dr. Durbin's impeachment 
rests upon the following passage from Burnet. 

" One alteration of more importance was made in the year 1571. These words 
of the XXth Article, The Church hath power to decree 7-ites and ceremonies and authority 
in controversies of faith, were left out both in the manuscripts and in the printed 
editions, but were afterwards restored according to the AYtic]es printed Anno 1563. 
I cannot find out in what year they were again put in the printed copies. They 
appear in two several impressions in Queen Elizabeth's time, which are in my 
hands. It passes commonly that it was done by Abp. Laud, and his enemies laid 
this upon him among other things, that he had corrupted the doctrine of this 
Church by this addition ; but he cleared himself of that as well he might, and in. 
a speech in the Star Chamber appealed to the orignal and aifirmed these words 
were in it." 

Of this passage I remark, that Burnet's assertion that the clause 
was left out " both in the manuscript and in the printed editions 
of 1571," is contradicted by authority that he himself produces. 
At his own request, the Master of C. C. College, Cambridge, 
made two collations ; one of the " Original MS,^' with the 
printed edition of 1563, and with the edition of 1553 of "King 
Edward's Articles ;" the other collation was of the " Original 
MS,'' of 1562, with the MS. and printed edition of 1571. 
Now as to Article XX, the results of this last collation are as 
follows, according to the record.* 

" Art. 20. MS. The Church hath power to decree rites and 
ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith. And yet. 

These words are not in the original MS. 

MS. Ought it not to enforce any thing. 

Fr. It ought not to enforce anything.'' 

This collation then proves, that both the MS. of 1571, and 
the printed edition of 1571 contained the disputed clause ; and 
that the same was not in the " Original MS." of the XXXIX 
Articles, that is, of the year 1562, which every body knows. Bur- 
net's statement therefore is only one instance, among many others, 

* Burnet's Exposition, N. Y., 1843, p. 15. 



22 

of his heedlessness in reporting facts. With this agrees the ac- 
count given by Dr. Card well in his Synodalia, (p. 34, note.) The 
original MS. (i. e. of 1562,) was laid before the Queen but did not 
receive her sanction. But a year afterwards the articles were 
printed by her commandj with the declaration, that they had her 
" royal approval." This was the " printed edition of 1563," to 
which Burnet refers ; and this edition ditfers from the " Original 
MS." of 1562, in having the disputed clause, and in excluding 
the XXIXth Article. 

There can be little doubt therefore that this clause was origin- 
ally inserted by the Queen and Privy Council, to whom a right of 
interference in such matters was then conceded. However, no 
matter who was the author, it afterwards received the sanction 
of the Church, and it appeared in the printed editions of 1563, 
1571, 1581, 1586, 1593, 1612, 1624, 1628, 1629, 1630, 1631, and 
others that are all in the Bodleian Library. There were also 
two editions, one Latin, the other English, published in 1571, and 
agreeing with the Original MS. of 1562. 

As to the calumny against Abp. Laud, that is refuted by the 
passage which Dr. Durbin cites. Burnet says," he cleared him- 
self of that, as well he might, and in a speech in the Star Chamber 
appealed to the original, and affirmed these words were in it." 
And yet in the face of this he says " in the judgment of charity (!) 
[Dr. Durbin's charity?] it may be concluded as it was commonly 
in Bishop Burnet's time, that the passage was foisted into the 
Article by Abp. Laud, for the purpose of bringing back the 
Church to Rome." 

Judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts ; 
And men have lost their reason ! 

How could archbishop Laud have '^ foisted those words into the 
article," when, as even Burnet says, " they appeared in two 
several impressions in Queen Elizabeth's time which were in 
his hands" — that is before Laud was born, or while he was a 
boy ? This stale, oft-repeated and as often-refuted Puritan 
calumny may now surely be consigned to the "tomb of the 
Capulets," there to rest in fit companionship with the " Nag's 
head" fable of the Jesuits. 

I proceed to consider the Canon of 1571. Dr. Durbin says, I 



23 

knew this had never been of authority in the church. I reply, I 
did not know it, neither do I now. It is authority ; the authority 
of the church. It is her voice, her command — pubUshed under 
the hand and seal of all the Bishops of England, at the time ; 
and it has never been recalled, modified, or explained away. 
Nor could the church have abrogated it, without passing sentence 
of condemnation against herself, her creeds, liturgy, and homilies ; 
without a departure from those principles on which she justified 
her Reformotion. But why were not the Canons of 1571 accom- 
panied by the royal sign-manual? Because the Queen had 
objection to that paragraph, which I quoted, and which with all 
the rest was approved and signed by such m.en as Grindal and 
Jewell ? The idea is supremely absurd, as every one who re- 
members the stern-unbending front, with which Elizabeth met 
the Puritans and their measures for further reformation, must 
perceive at once. Dr. Cardwell in his Synodalia, gives some 
passages from Strype's life of Parker which go far towards 
solving the difficulty. 

« The Archbishop laboured to get the Queen's allowance to it, (i. e. the book 
of Canons) but had it not : she, often declining to give her license to their orders 
and constitutions, reckoning that her bishops' power and jurisdiction alone, 
having their authority derived from her,* was sufficient. In the month of July 
or August the Archbishop sent this book to Grindal, Archbishop of York, re- 
commending it to the observation of the Clergy of his province ; and for his 
judgment of it. 

« What that Archbishop's thoughts of it were is worth observing ; which 
appears from his answer he sent to the x\rchbishop of Canterbury, as follows : 
'He thanked his grace for the book of articles and discipline, but he stood 
in doubt whether they had vigorem legis unless they had been concluded upon in 
synod, and after ratified by her majesty's royal assent in scriptis (fine words, 
added he, fly away as wind, and will not serve us, if we were impleaded in a 
case of pragmunire ;) or else were confirmed by act of parliament. He said he 
liked the book very well ; and that if hereafter he should doubt in any point, or 
wish it enlarged in any respect, he would signify to his grace hereafter. And if 
there were at present want of sufficient authority, yet it was well the book was 
ready and might receive more authority at the next parliament :' yet we see he 
and his provincial bishops signed it. 

"But notwithstanding these doubts and suspicions which did not without 
reason arise in the minds of these and other of the bishops, (knowing what 
watchful back-friends they had) yet they proceeded according to the above book of 
discipline, especially in what concerned their clergy in their respective dioceses." 
* Strype's Erastianism commits nobody but himself. 



24 

The Canon in question, let it be observed, "concerned their 
Clergy." Its title is Concionatores. 

Elizabeth's conduct in this matter (of her motives presently) 
receives illustration from the manner in which she acted towards 
another book of discipliae, (the Ubellus admonitionum) whose 
authority is assumed in the canons of 1571, in the canon prescribing 
the duties, &c., of Church wardens [Aeditui), Of this book 
Dr. Cardwell remarks, "The celebrated Advertisements of 1564, 
which, acting on the same principles as in the case of these 
canons the Queen refused to put forth with her sanction, although 
she had required the bishops in commission to draw them up, 
and afterwards insisted that they should be rigorously enforced. 
By this and by other synods, they seem to have been considered 
as having the most perfect authority. ^^ 

And yet they had not the ratification of the Queen's signature, 
no more than the canons of 1571. The two codes of discipline 
stand exactly upon the same ground. 

It is not difficult to discover Elizabeth's motives. A new order 
of things had just been introduced ; principles were not estab- 
lished ; confusion reigned in the Church, and necessity in certain 
cases took the place of precedent and law. Elizabeth's Catholic 
predilections are well known; she stood between the Parliament 
and the Church, firmly checking the encroachments of the former 
upon the prerogatives of the latter. They had enacted that she 
was the supreme temporal head of the Church, and she acted 
upon their statute, to foil parliamentary interference ; v/hile she, 
at the same time, showed her anxiety to have the Church govern- 
ed solely by Episcopal authority, in not obtruding her sanctions 
upon the canons of discipline enacted by the Convocation or the 
Bishops. Accordingly, when in 1562 the Commons interfered 
with the Church, by passing a bill ratifying the XXXIX Articles, 
and then sent their bill up to the Lords ; she stopped its progress 
before it had passed to the second reading, considering it, as she 
said, (for it was all she could say to Parliament) an encroach- 
ment upon her prerogative as supreme head of the Church. 
Again, when in 1571 the Commons made a similar eiFort, the 
following message was sent from the Lords to the Commons, 
"that the Queen's majesty having been made privy to the said 



Articles, liketh very well of them ar^d mindeth to publish them, 
and have them executed hy the Bishops, by direction of her 
highness' regal authority of supremacy of the Church of England^ 
and 7iot to have the same dealt in by Parliament.'''^ And 
on the other hand, as we have seen, the Advertisements of 1564 
were enforced, under her command, solely by the authority of the 
Church ; and in like manner the Canons of 1571. 

These Canons have, moreover, ever since been esteemed as 
authority, except by those persons who, agreeing with the infidel 
Hobbes, suppose that the State is the Church, the " public 
authority to call and send ministers into the Lord's vineyard," 
(spoken of in Art. 23) "the authority of the State,"* and the 
Bishops and Clergy, officials of the sovereign rather than Priests 
of the Most High God. I was not therefore following Dr. 
Pusey, as Dr. Durbin with characteristic cleverness insinuates, 
when I appealed to the Canon in question. It was not he, who 
led me to cite it, but the noble, learned, and saint-like Beveridge, 
who died more than a century ago. It was the use he had made 
of it in one of his sermons on the Church, which first impressed 
my mind with its authority and forceful meaning. His words 
are full of wisdom. 

" Especially it concerns us who are to instruct others in the way to bliss, to 
use none but sound words, such as are consonant to the Scriptures, as interpreted 
by the Catholic Church in all ages. I speak not this of myself; it is the express com- 
mand of our Church in the Canons she put forth in the year 1571, where she 
hath these words : Imprimis vera videbunt QConcionatores,') Sec, &c. [' But the 
preachers shall in the first place see to it that they never teach anything in the 
pulpit which they may wish to be religiously held and believed by the people, 
except what is agreeable to the doctrines of the Old and New Testament, and 
what the catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops have collected out of that very 
doctrine.'] So wisely hath our Church provided against novelties ; insomuch 
that had this one rule been duly observed as it ought there would have been no 
such thing as heresy or schism amongst us ; but we should all have continued 
firm both to the doctrine and discipline of the Universal Church, and so should 
have held fast the form of sound words, according to the Apostles' counsel."! 

So much for the authority of the Canon of 1571 ; now for my 
alleged use of it : I am asked — 

* Durbin's Observations in Europe, vol. 2, p. 80, note. Has Dr. Durbin ever 
read the Preface to the Ordinal 1 
f Beveridge's Sermons in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, Sermon VI. 

3 



26 

" How could you venture to produce this Canon in support of one of the capital 
errors of Popery, and this too when it was not designed to favour your interpre- 
tation, but exactly the contrary, as would have appeared to your reader had you 
quoted the whole of it, instead of quoting only so much as Dr. Pusey had pro- 
duced in his Letter to the Bishop of Oxford 1 The latter part of the Canon reads 
thus : ' They [preachers] shall not teach vain and senseless opinions, and 
heresies, and Popish errors,'* and this too at a time when Popish errors as now 
were rife in the Church of England!" 

The amazing imbecility of this passage will save Dr. Durbin 
from the retort it invites. My only answer therefore is, that I did 
not quote the Canon in support of one of the capital errors of 
"Popery," but to exhibit a fundamental principle of the Church 
of England. Dr. Durbin, it seems, has not the ability to perceive 
that because the Canon charges the clergy not to preach vain and 
senseless opinions and Popish errors, and also, not to preach any 
thing at any time, (ne quid unquam) but that which is agreeable 
to the doctrine of the Old and New Testaments, and what the 
Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops have collected out of 
that very doctrine ; therefore, what the Catholic Fathers taught 
as Scriptural doctrine, is not "popish error;" following such 
traditional teaching in obedience to the Canon is not "a capital 
error of popery." I gave it no other interpretation than that 
which every body gives it ; which every body must give it ; 
which even Dr. Durbin gives it, in trying to impeach its authority. 
The sum of my remarks was as follows : 

" You must therefore perceive. Rev. Sir, that obedience on the part of Anglican 
divines to the Canon of their Church is not to act inconsistently with the Vlth 
Article. A recognition of the ' authority of the Church in controversies of faith,' 
submission to what she ' enforces to be believed' as Scriptural truth, (Art. XX.) 
preaching only what the catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops have collected 
out of Scripture does not deny but rather maintains that Holy Scripture c©n- 
taineth all things necessary to salvation." 

II. I now proceed to substantiate the ground I maintained in 

* Why did not Dr. Durbin proceed with what he puts forth as his quotation, 
and give what immediately follov/s as a contrast to " Popish errors," " nee omnino 
quicquam" &c. &c. i. e., " Nor anything whatever whereby the ignorant multi- 
tude may be incited to a fondness for novelty,''^ &c. " Popery" was no novelty, 
but Puritanism then was the novelty of the day. Perhaps Dr. D. quoted from 
his " Confutation of Puseyism," which would explain all this and more besides. 



27 

my Letter, on the means of Justification ; not that my position 
needs any strengthening at all, but simply for the sake of de- 
veloping the proofs I there advanced, that minds which have 
been sophisticated by sectarian dogmas may be able, if possi- 
ble, to see what is the Church's doctrine, and that it stands utterly 
opposed to the teaching of Methodism. 

Dr. Durbin begins his remarks on this subject in his usual ad 
captandum style ; he places our Xlth Article side by side with his 
own, and then bravely asks, '^ are they not identical ?" To be 
sure they are in their letter (except that ours confesses itself to be 
an incomplete statement, which his does not), and I never had 
the stupidity to deny it. I discussed no such point as this, but 
rather that his interpretation of the words " faith only," so as to 
exclude not merely our own merits, but also all sacramental 
media, whereby,~solely for Christ's sake, and not for our works, 
justification is given to faith ; gives a meaning to our Article 
which neither its own text, nor Holy Writ, nor the Homily, nor 
our Church's teaching elsewhere will warrant. All this I shall 
prove as I proceed. 

I stated as an undeniable fact, that the Article raised but one 
point, viz. the ground or procuring cause {propter quod) of man's 
justification ; to wit, the merits of Christ in opposition to our own 
works or deservings. A man half blind can see this on reading 
the English of the Article, but for the sake of those whose vision 
is yet more obscure, I shall cite the Latin version (which is the 
original draft) where the order of the words indicates the em- 
phasis : ''TdinXwxn. propter mexiinm Domini ac Servatoris nostri 
Jesu Christi, per fidem, non propter opera, et merita nostra, 
justi coram Deo reputamur. Quare sola fide nos justificari," 
&c. ; that is literally and in the same order, ^' Only /or the sake of 
the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not 
for the sake o/our works and merits, are we reputed just before 
God. Wherefore that we are justified only by faith is a doctrine 
most wholesome and full of comfort, as in the Homily concern- 
ing the justification of man is more largely unfolded." The last 
sentence of the Article is introduced by " wherefore,'^ and conse- 
quently it is a conclusion deduced from what goes before, thus 



28 

showing that the words ^' we are justified only by faith/' means 
nothing more and nothing less than this, that " we are reputed 
just only for the sake of the merit of our Lord, by faith, and not 
for the sake of our works and merits. So much for the text of 
the Article. But to put our Church's meaning of the words 
'' faith only," beyond dispute, I referred as the Article directs, to 
the Homily, where the doctrine is more largely expressed, in 
order to obtain its decisive judgment. In making this reference, 
the opportunity occurred of giving an example of the Church's 
use of her own prescribed rule of teaching, and accordingly I 
said, "that Homily professes to deliver the doctrine as it had 
always been received by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church 
Catholic," which shows ours is not the Lutheran doctrine. To 
prove this assertion I quoted the words, " And after this manner 
to be justified only by this true and Uvely faith, speak all the old 
and ancient authors, both Greeks and Latins." Hereupon Ur. 
Durbin tries his skill in the construction of scare-crows, and pro- 
ceeds to solicit the shame and grief of all good men for me, be- 
cause I omitted the words "in Christ," after the word "faith"— 
the merest accident, caused by my hastily following the usual 
eUiptical phrase, "justification by faith," wherein the Object of 
faith is always understood and always omitted.* I do not believe 
there are any good men so stupid as to feel any shame at all on 
my account, though it is possible they may have some pity for Dr. 
Durbin, for that he should say that I made this omission " to lead, 
the reader to the conclusion, that the faith was to be had in 
Sacraments I" I take it upon m.e to say that a more preposterous 
idea never entered into the mind of man. There never was a 
man who believed that he was justified by faith in the Sacra- 
ments ; and before Dr. Durbin arose, there never was a man who 
believed there was any such nonsense possible. But this is not 
all : he sa^^s that 1 " very carefully suppressed the quotations 
which the Homily gives from Hilary Basil and Ambrose." Ex- 

* I hope I shall not be charged with -u-ilfutlly " causing shame and grief to all 
good men" if I point to a similar oversight in the translation of our IXth Article. 
It reads, "And although there is no condemnation for them that believe and are 
baptized," &c. The Latin is, " Et quanquam renatis et credentibus nulla propter 
Christum est condemnatio ;" i. e. literally, " And although fen- Chrisfs sake, there 
is no condemnation to them that are regenerate and believe." 



29 

cellent ! And that when the passages from those Fathers simply 
Occupy the ground of the Article as I have interpreted it, viz. 
opposing Christ's righteousness to man's; His merits to our 
works. I did not cite these passages, because I had no occasion 
whatever to quote the words of those saints. I referred to the 
homily for the purpose of adducing its words alone ; and what- 
ever the words of those Fathers may have been, the homily said, 
(which was enough for me) that such and such was their mean- 
ing, which is also the meaning of the homily. They said no 
more nor less than this :— 

" This saying that we are justified by faith only, freely and without works, is 
spoken [i. e. by the fathers] for to take away clearly all merit of our works as 
being unable to deserve our justification .... and therefore wholly to ascribe the 
merit and deserving of our justification unto Christ only and His most precious 
blood-shedding." 

Dr. Durbin seems very indignant that I should imagine that 
he and others who agree with him cannot, in their present cir- 
cumstances, distinctly apprehend the doctrines of the Church. 
But a more signal proof of the truth of my assertion there could 
not be than the remarks he has made, and the quotations he has 
adduced upon the subject of justification. It was no matter with 
him that I maintained the doctrine of ^' justification by faith only" 
in as strong terms as the Article ; that I said that faith* is the 
sole means, the sole grace which qualified us for a participation 
of the merits of our Lord ; that according to the homily " faith 
only" is an exclusion of personal merit in the sinner, and of 
course of his works, from being the procuring cause {propter 
quod) of his justification; and an ascription of all desert to our 
Lord and His Cross — no, all this amounts to nothing in Dr. Dur- 

* The kind of faith here meant, I explained by this passage of the Homily : 
"Nevertheless, this sentence that we be justified by faith only is not so meant of 
them, (i. e. the Fathers) that the said justifying faith is alone in man, without 
true repentance, hope, charity, dread, and the fear of God at any time and sea- 
sons." That is, it is not bare faith, but what the Church writers call ''fides form- 
ata charitate,'' — and St. Paul, " faith which worketh by love." So also St. James : 
" Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was his faith made 
perfect.*^ Ch. ii. 22. " Ye see then how that by works a man is justified and not 
by faith only," v. 24. Yet St. James is far from saying that works deserve our 
justification, or that justification is any thing else than a gift of God's free mercy, 
imparted to us, " only for the sake of the merits" of our Lord. 

3* 



30 

bin's eyes. He reiterates against me quotations from the 
Homilies, dressed up in capitals and italics, which prove just 
what I have said, that we are "justified freely without works, 
by faith only ;" thus giving his reader the idea that, so far from 
maintaining, I had denied that cardinal proposition. Such is the 
confusion which reigns in his mind on this subject, that although 
every passage he quotes opposes faith to works and personal 
merit, and to nothing else; yet he cannot divest himself of the 
notion, that by the Xlth Article, " faith only" is opposed also to the 
life-giving grace of the Sacraments. What is the consequence ? 
Why the marvellous, the profane absurdity, of placing God's 
gift of the new birth in Jesus Christ, and the Body and Blood, 
the indwelling of the Incarnate Word, in the same category with 
our works and personal virtues, our " repentance, hope, love, 
fear and dread of God !" Accordingly, all his efforts go to prove 
that the Church in teaching "justification by faith only" means 
not simply "without our works or deservings," but also " by 
faith without regeneration,''^ " by faith without the indwelling 
and quickening spirit of the Second Adam," the "Word made 
flesh :" for these are the gifts conveyed by the Sacraments. Such 
is the consequence of Dr. Durbin's reasoning, if reasoning it may 
be called. It matters not that he does not believe there is any 
such grace given by Sacraments ; it matters not that the Sacra- 
ments, so to speak, of his Society, are, consistently with his 
religious theory, man''s works and not God's, and therefore 
are, agreeably to his Article, excluded from the means of justi- 
fication, as being properly opposed to faith ; — the Church teaches 
very differently of her Sacraments, and he knows it ; and in 
quoting the language of the Church, he should, by all that is due 
to justice and truth, interpret it according to her usage, and not 
by the principles of Methodism. 

After I had thus proved that the Homily, by the words " faith 
only" simply meant to shut out personal merit in the sinner, and 
not God's gifts from the means of justification (an absurdity which, 
as I have shown, would be equivalent to saying, that we are 
justifiable by faith only without the grace of justification); and 
had adverted also to the fact that that doctrine of "justification 
by faith only" which has always been received in the Church 



31 

Catholic, was the doctrine which the Homily professed to teach 
— I asked in my Letter, 

" What authority, therefore, has any one for saying that our Xlth Article ex- 
cludes the Sacraments from being God's means and instruments for conveying 
justifying grace to the penitent believer? Was not the Sacramental system 
maintained in its fullest vigor by all those Catholic Fathers to whom the Homily 
appeals (from Origen to SS. Anselm and Bernard*) as having taught justifi- 
cation by faith only 1 This of course is undeniable ; and therefore quite con- 
sistently does the same Homily recognize the Sacramentsf as instrumental 
means of justification. (See also Art. XXVII.) It says, " Infants being baptized 
are by this sacrifice (i. e. of the Cross) washed from their sins [brought to God's 
favour and made His children and inheritors of His kingdom. And they which in 
act or deed, do sin after Baptism, when they turn again to God unfeignedly, they 
are likeivise (i. e. as formerly by Baptism, so now Sacramentally) washed by this 
sacrifice from their sins^] ; and again, " our ofiice is not to pass the time of this 
present life unfruitfully or idly, after that we are baptized or justified, much less 
after that we be made Christ's members to live contrary to the same, making 
ourselves members of the devil." 

Of this passage Dr. Durbin remarks, 

" I have carefully examined and compared the Homily with your views of it, 
and extracts from it, and I confess that I feel sorrow (1) at what you have done. 
You have endeavoured to sustain your doctrine of Sacramental justification by 
this Homily ; when it does not make even an indirect allusion to that doctrine. If the 
Homily make such an allusion, I challenge you to show where and in what." 

Brave words ! The reader who remembers, that in the pas- 
sages just quoted from the Homily, and which were " carefully 
examined,^^ it is said that infants baptized are, by the sacrifice 
of the Cross, washed from their sins, brought into God's favour, 
made His children and inheritors of His kingdom; that "our 
office is not to pass the time of this present life idly after that we 
are baptized or justified (where baptism and justification are in- 
terchangeable equivalents for the same thing); will perhaps be led 
to doubt whether Dr. Durbin knows that Baptism is a Sacrament. 

The reason is now apparent why it was that I said I could not 

* i. e. down to the 12th century. 

f If one Sacrament be recognized, the other is also ; for they both convey 
similar though not altogether the same gifts. By one we are made members of 
Christ, and by the other he dwells in us ; and both are for the remission of sins, 

t This passage in brackets was for the sake of brevity omitted in my Letter, 
The explanation I give in the parenthesis is justified as well by the laws of 
grammar as by the prayer in the Communion office ; " Grant us therefore so to 
eat the flesh of thy dear Son, and to drink His blood, that our sinful bodies may 
be made clean by His Body, and our souls washed through His most precious 
Blood," i&c. 



32 

treat of the Church's doctrine of justification without taking into 
view the Sacraments ; especially when I was obliged to consider 
that doctrine relatively to what the Methodists maintained. And 
herein I shall prove that I was moving directly in the line marked 
out for me as well by the Church as Holy Scripture. 

Is the remission of sins an element of justification ? All 
agree that it is, and some maintain that that is all. It is 
an Article of the Creed, " I acknowledge one Baptism/or the 
the remission of sins." In our Baptismal office we pray for the 
Candidate that he coming to Holy baptism, may receive remis- 
sion of sin by spiritual regeneration. After he is baptized the 
minister says, "seeing now dearly beloved that this person is 
regenerate and grafted into the body of Christ's Church, let us 
give thanks," &c. So too the Homilies besides the passages 
already quoted : " Yea we be therefore washed in baptism from 
the filthinesss of sin, that we should live afterwards in pureness 
of life." 2 B. 13, pt. 1. So too St. Peter, in the first sermon ever 
preached in the Church : " Repent and be baptized in the name 
of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive 
the gift of the Holy Ghost." And such also was the express 
word of Ananias to penitent Saul, "Arise and be baptized and 
tvash away thy sins^ Again, are we justified by being taken 
out of the world and from our condemned relationship with the 
old Adam, and translated into God's kingdom, and made mem- 
bers of Christ by the Holy Ghost ? See the Baptismal service 
every where. And the Catechism : " in Baptism wherein I was 
made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of 
the Kingdom of Heaven." So too the Homily; "by holy pro- 
mises we be made lively members of Christ when we profess His 
religion, receiving the Sacrament of Baptism." 1 B. 7. And as 
before, " Infants being baptized .... are brought into God's 
favour, made His children and inheritors of His kingdom in Hea- 
ven." So St. Paul ; "' ye are all children of God by faith in 
Christ Jesus, for as many of you as have been baptized into 
Christ have put on Christ ;" and again, " ye are washed, ye are 
sanctified, ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and 
by the Spirit of our God ;" and again, " By one Spirit are we 
all baptized into one Body." Is a participation of the merito- 
rious death and resurrection of our Lord, justification ? See 



33 

the Baptismal Office, where, in the thanksgiving for the grace the 
person has just received in the Sacrament, it is said, " We be- 
seech thee to grant that he being dead unto sin, and living unto 
righteousness, may crucify the old man, and utterly abolish the 
whole body of sin." So also the Catechism says, " the inward 
grace received in Holy Baptism, is a death unto sin and a new 
birth unto righteousness.^^ And St. Paul : " Know ye not that 
so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized 
into his death ? Therefore we are buried with Him, by bap- 
tism into death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead by 
the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness 
of life." (Rom. vi. 3, 4 ; and (in verse 7,) speaking of those who 
are thus dead unto sin, he says, "for he that is dead is justified 
from sin." In a word, is justification that unspeakable saving 
gift of God which Is bestowed upon us, not for our works of right- 
eousnes, but of His mercy through Christ our Lord ? Hear then 
St. Paul; "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, 
but according to His mercy. He saved us by the washing 
{^ia-kovt^ov^ by means of the laver, or font) of regeneration, and the 
renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abundantly 
through Jesus Christ our Saviour, that being justified by His 
grace we might be made heirs of eternal hfe." 
Dr. Durbin asks : 

"How could you dare to say that these same Fathers [from Origento St. Ber- 
nard] taught the 'Sacramental system,' and 'therefore the Homily consistently 
recognizes the Sacraments as instrumental means of justification V The 
Homily says they taught the doctrine of ' Sacramental justification.' Both can- 
not be true." 

Both are true; and the evidence I have just adduced both from 
our Church's standards and Holy Scripture, proves it, der)ion- 
strates it. Was not St. Paul justified by faith only ?* And were 
not his sins washed away by baptism ? Were not the converts 
on the great feast of Pentecost justified by faith only ? And 
were they not baptized for the remission of sins and the gift of 
the Holy Ghost ? But it is true that neither St. Paul nor St. Peter, 
nor the Fathers knew any thing of such a doctrine as that taught 
by the Methodists; of which Dr. Durbin rightly judges that it 

* i. e. our Church explains the formula, " only for the sake of our Lord Jesus 
Christ by faith, and not for the sake of our own works or merits." 



34 

cannot be true, if the Sacraments be means of justification, as 
I have shown them to be. And accordingly the Methodists 
never hear their rehgious teachers announce the doctrine and 
gospel of the Apostles. Did a JNIethodist ever exhort any- 
body to be baptized for the remission of his sins and the 
gift of the Holy Ghost ? Never ! Did a Methodist ever de- 
liver such a message as that of Ananias to Saul, "be baptized 
and wash away thy sins ?" Never! such doctrine never escapes 
their lips. Their teachers are not able to enunciate such truth, 
for if they did it would overthrow their whole system. They 
have a mode of proceeding totally different, one too unknown to 
the Apostles, to the Fathers, and to the Church of Christ. They 
ask the astounding question, " Have you experienced the pardon 
of sin !" And they thus make ihQvi: feeling, that which is their 
own, take the place of the Holy Sacraments which our Lord 
has made the witnesses and seals and pledges of the grace He 
bestows. Was a Methodist ever told that the reason why he 
should not sin is, that by his baptism he was baptized into 
Christ's death ? Never ! such awful conclusions from the won- 
derful mystery of Holy Baptism as are to be seen in the sixth 
chapter of Romans, are never heard from a Methodist pulpit, 
nor seen written in their books. The Lutheran dogma of jus- 
tification virtually blots out from their Bibles the doctrine of the 
Apostles, and veils from their eye-sight the teaching inspired by 
the Holy Ghost. " He that hath ears to hear, let him hear !'' 

Let it not be supposed that a participation of such unspeakable 
grace as the Church teaches is conveyed by Sacraments, will 
ipso facto save a man. Minds filled with Lutheran and Calvin- 
istic notions are accustomed to draw this conclusion ; but this only 
shows their inability, while their minds are thus sophisticated, to 
apprehend the doctrine of the Church. They take one premiss 
from the Catholic system, and the other from their own ; and the 
monstrous hybrid offspring of such an argument, they try to father 
on the Church. Nevertheless, our doctrine is most simple, and 
adapted to the minds of little children ; but at the same time the 
capacity of a Newton may fail to apprehend it. It is a law of 
the Kingdom of Heaven, that its mysteries are hid from the wise 
and prudent, and revealed unto babes. " Even so Father ! for so 



35 

it seemed good in thy sight." The parables of our Lord illus- 
trate the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven. The soul of each 
child of Adam on passing from the world into the Communion 
of Saints is a well filled and lighted lamp, which it is his glorious 
calling to keep filled, and trimmed, and burning, till the Bride- 
groom's coming. And this can he do, and will he do, if he be 
"wise." But if he be " foolish" and improve not his privileges 
in the Kingdom of Heaven, and so suffer his lamp to go out, the 
glorious coming of the Bridegroom will bring him nothing but 
woe. He will not only lose all he had, but besides that he will 
be punished for losing it. The gift of Holy Baptism thus be- 
comes the basis of all the Christian's responsibihties. Their 
foundation is Grace. The Jew could look no farther than the 
Law, for the ground of moral obligation ; nor the heathen beyond 
the law of nature." But St. Paul says to those " baptized into 
Christ," " Ye are not under the Law, but under grace :" "yield 
yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and 
your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." Work 
out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God 
who worketh in you to will and to do of His good pleasure ; and 
again, " in Baptism ivherein we are risen with Him ... if ye 
then be risen with Christ — seek those things which are above." 
The harmony between the facts that we are justified by faith 
only and at the same time by the grace given in Sacraments, 
(because the grace thus given is the reward vouchsafed to faith) 
it is to be hoped, may now be distinctly seen. And therefore, I 
shall bring the discussion of this matter to a close, with an illus- 
tration aff'orded by the Gospels. I refer to the case of the woman 
who was cured of an issue of blood by touching the border of 
our Lord's garment. " Jesus said, somebody hath touched me, 
for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me." . . . And He said 
to the woman, " Daughter, be of good comfort, thy faith hath 
made thee whole." Now I put the question to those who say 
that " we cannot be justified or saved by faith only, and by the 
Sacraments also ;" was it the "virtue" which flowed out of our 
Lord's Person through the border of His garment, or was it the 
woman's faith, that made her whole ? Is one opposed to the 
other ? Are not both true ? Assuredly they are. So also is it 



36 

in the salvation of man. The Person of our Lord, God and Man, 
is the source of that Kfe and grace which regenerates, renews, 
justifies, and sanctifies us ; and which at the last day will quicken 
our mortal bodies into life again, and make them like His own 
glorious Body. " His life is the well-spring and cause of ours." 
" He that hath the Son hath life." The living branches of the 
True Vine partake of its sap and verdure ; the members of His 
Body share in His fulness. '^ In Him dwelleth all the fulness of 
the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete. (rtsTt^pansroi made full) 
in Him who is the Head, buried with Him in Baptism, wherein 
also ye are risen with Him, through the faith of God's operation." 
The Sacraments instituted by Himself are to us, what His garment 
was to the woman. He is hid in them. They are the means and 
channels through which His life-giving grace flows into us ; and 
faith as with the woman, is that which makes man susceptible of 
this grace, the subjective means of partaking of it, as the Sacra- 
ments are the objective means of conveying it. Or in the words 
of the great Hooker, '^ that saving grace which Christ originally 
is or hath for His people, by Sacraments He severally deriveth 
into every member thereof. Sacraments serve as the instruments 
of God to that^end and purpose." .... '^ We receive Christ Jesus 
in Baptism once as the first beginner, in the Eucharist often 
being by continual degrees the finisher of our life." 

I wish that I might here take leave of this subject. It is ex- 
ceedingly irksome to be obliged again to go over the ground 
which I occupied in my Letter to Dr. Durbin, in order to prove 
that Methodism is at utter variance with the Church on this 
fundamental point ; which, as I am happy to acknowledge, he 
agrees with me in saying, decides every thing in controversy. I 
thought I had brought the matter to the crucial test, when I cited 
our Article " Of sin after Baptism" as having been entitled by 
the Methodists, (in order to make it suit their religion) " Of 
Sin after Justification." And here a theologian would have 
seen that the question was settled by the documentary evidence 
furnished by the Methodists on the one hand, and by our Church 
on the other. What are the words of that Article ? As Dr. 
Durbin is fond of seeing our respective Articles printed side by 
side, I may as well gratify him here. 



37 



OF SIN AFTER BAPTISM. 

Not every deadly sin (Non omne 
peccatum mortale) willingly committed 
after Baptism, is sin against the Holy 
Ghost and unpardonable. Wherefore 
the grant of repentance is not to be 
denied to such as fall into sin after 
Baptism. J[fter u-e have received the Holy 
Ghost, we may depart from grace given, 
and fall into sin, and by the grace of God 
(we may) arise again and amend our 
lives. And therefore they are to be 
condemned, which say, they can no 
more sin as long as they live here, or 
deny the place of forgiveness to such 
as truly repent. 



OP SIN AFTER JUSTIFICATION. 

ZNlot every sin willingly committed 
after Justification is the sin against the 
Holy Ghost, and unpardonable. Where- 
fore the grant of repentance is not to be 
denied to such as fall into sin after 
Justification ; after we have received the 
Holy Ghost, we may depart from grace 
given and fall into sin, and by the grace 
of God rise again and amend our lives. 
And therefore they are to be condemned 
who say they can no more sin as long 
as they live here ; or deny the place of 
forgiveness to such as truly repent. 



The variations in the text of the Methodist Article, other than 
the change of the word "Baptism" to " Justification/' however 
significant, do not interfere with the argument I deduce from 
its title. It is plain, that language which our Church adopts 
in respect to Baptism, the Methodists cannot use without 
applying it to their doctrine of justification ; thus denying for 
.themselves, that justification is the grace of Baptism, and assert- 
ing that the Church teaches, that it is the same. Very consistently 
does Dr. Durbin assert, that these are " two totally distinct points, 
and so expressly declared in the titles of the two Articles." But 
who made them distinct ? That is the question. That they are 
distinct in his system, was the fact that I cited the Articles to 
prove ; and that very distinction shows the opposition that 
exists between Methodism and the Church on this fundamental 
point. And yet he strangely says, after many words of no 
importance, about my not meeting the question " directly and 
frankly," "subterfuge and vacillation," "false issues," (!) "adroit 
substitutions," and the like : 

« All that you have said, therefore, of the inconsistency of Methodism touching 
the Sacrament of Baptism falls to the ground ; for it is predicated of our Article Of 
Sin after Justification, and not of our Article Of Baptism nor of our baptismal 
service, both of which are taken from the Church of England. But the whole 
of these injurious blunders arise from" 

Dr. Durbin's own brain. As to what he says, of my not taking 
into view his baptismal service, I beg to refer, in contradicting his 

4 



38 

assertion, to pp. 16, 17, 18, of my Letter, where I pointed out 
and proved from his baptismal service, its doctrinal Variation 
from our own. And as to his article Of Baptism^ I did not refer 
to that, simply because I thought that after a point was once 
proved, nothing more need be said about it. It seems however, 
that I set too high an estimate upon his theological discernment, 
and therefore to accommodate him, I suppose I must, even at the 
risk of taxing the reader's patience, refer to his Article of BapTTSm. 
But let us first fix our eyes upon the point whence the broad 
line of division is here drawn, that so we may follow it up con- 
tinuously. On reference to the Article Of Sin after Baptism, 
quoted above, it will be seen that it distinctly recognizes the 
doctrine of spiritual regeneration, and of justification, in Baptism. 
Its words are, " after we have received the Holy Ghost we may 
depart from grace given, and fall into sin;'' this being equiva- 
lent to saying, that " after Baptism we may depart from grace 
given," &c. It is this doctrine of Regeneration which the 
Methodists do not hold ; and as it is this which makes the great 
difference between sins before, and sins after Baptism, the 
Methodists do not, and while they are Methodists they cannot 
recognize any difference between such sins ; nor correspondingly, 
any difference between works performed before, and after Bap- 
tism.* The INIethodist Article of Baptism will show the same doc- 
trinal variation ; that is, that they do not agree with the Church 
as to what that Sacrament is, and of what it is the means. 



ART. XXTII. OF BAPTISM.. 

Baptism is not only a sign of profes- 
sion, and mark of difference ■whereby- 
Christian men are discerned from others 
that be not christened, but is also a sign 
of Regeneration or New Birth, -whereby 
as by an instrument, they that receive 
Baptism rightly are grafted into the 



THE XETHODIST ARTICLE. OF BAPTISM. 

Baptism is not only a sign of profes- 
sion and mark of difference -whereby 
Christians are distinguished from others 
ihat are not baptized ; but it is also a 
sign of regeneration or new birth. The 
Baptism of yo^ung children is to be re- 
tained in the Church. 



* For the Church's doctrine of the efficacy of Christian works, the Xlth Homily 
of the second Book, entitled. Of Aims-Deeds, may be advantageously consulted. 
The doctrine there stated at length is very different from what is now commonly 
received; but as this is a point which does not enter into my present subject I 
pass it by. It should be remembered that Bp. Jewell had a great hand in setting 
forth the 2nd Book of Homilies, which the Articles also seem to prefer to the 
first Book. 



39 



Church; the promises of the forgive- 
ness of sin, and of our adoption to be 
Sons of God, (in Jilios Dei, among the 
sons of God) are visibly signed and 
sealed ; faith is confirmed, and grace 
increased by virtue of Prayer unto God. 
The Baptism of young children is in 
anywise to be retained in the Church as 
most agreeable with the institution of 
Christ. 

Let the reader mark the spot where the Methodists have 
stopped short, in trying to follow our Article ; it is at the very- 
point where the Church goes on to say what Baptism is the 
means of. And this omission coincides with their doctrine that 
persons are admitted into the Church, not by Baptism, as the 
Apostles taught, hut by "joining class.^' So speaks the "Disci- 
pline :" " Let none be received into the church, until they are 
recommended by a leader with whom they have met at least 
six months on trial, and have been baptized ;" &c. So we learn 
what Methodists mean, when they talk so loudly about the B^ible, 
as their " only rule of faith and practice ;" they intend very in- 
nocently to say, that "they follow the Book of Discipline instead." 
A comparison of the Articles on the all important doctrine of 
Original sin (on which if a man err, he errs throughout the 
whole plan of salvation by Christ) will reveal the same point of 
departure from the faith, and very much else which it is beside 
my present purpose to notice. 

ARTICLE IX. METHODIST ARTICLE. 



Original sin standeth not in the fol 
lowing of Adam, (as the Pelagians do 
vainly talk;) but it is the fault and 
corruption of the nature of every man 
that naturally is engendered of the off- 
spring of Adam, whereby man is very 
far gone from original righteousness, 
and is 'of his own nature inclined to 
evil, so that the flesh lusteth always 
contrary to the spirit; and therefore, 
in every person born into this world 
it deserveth God's wrath and damnation. 
And this infection of nature doth re- 
main, yea, in them that are regenerated ; 
whereby the lust of the flesh called in 



Original sin standeth not in the fol- 
lowing of Adam, (as the Pelagians do 
vainly talk,) but it is the corruption of 
the nature of every man, that naturally 
is engendered of the offspring of Adam, 
whereby man is very far gone from 
original righteousness, and is of his 
own nature inclined to evil, and that 
continually. 



40 

Greek ^povt^fxa oapxoj which some do 
expound the wisdom, some sensuality, 
some the affection, some the desire of 
the flesh, is not subject to the Law of 
God. And although there is no con- 
demnation for them that believe and are 
baptized ; yet the Apostle doth confess 
that concupiscence and lust hath of itself 
the nature of sin. 

The Church's doctrine of regeneration is recognized in this Arti- 
cle, as indeed it must always be where the doctrine of original sin 
is fully stated. But the Methodists have omitted that very portion 
which speaks of regeneration. The words, "to them who believe 
and are bapitzed," are the equivalents to these from the Latin ver- 
sion: " renatis et credentihus^^^ literally, " to the regenerated and 
believers." But notwithstanding all this documetary evidence, Dr. 
Durbin has the extraordinary boldness to assert, that the doctrine 
of Baptism is " the same in both Churches !" His proof is this, 
(and let the reader who has observed the difference in the two 
Articles of Baptism, mark it ;) " Every word of our seventeenth 
Article of Baptism being taken from the English Article of Bap- 
tism." Is not this rare logic ? With as much truth might he 
have said, that the Bible and the Nicene Symbol both teach the 
Creed of the Deist, because they both speak of " One God the 
Father Almighty."* 

* The following amazing words are found on p. 7 of Dr. Durbin's Letter. He is 
speaking of his " Christian Communion of more than a million of members," and 
says to me, it " derived its ordination [see Appendix B.] Articles of Religion, and 
Sacramental services from the samz source as your own and in the same language. 
I say in the same language, notwithstanding you have by a careful collation, found 
verbal alterations (?) in two or three instances (!)" Again, in a note he goes on in 
the sam-e reckless style : "The differences between the Articles and Services which 
the Methodist Episcopal Church has taken from the Church of England, and 
those of the Church are scarcely greater in reality than the differences between 
those of the Protestant Episcopal Church and the Church of England. In both 
cases the differences have mainly arisen from circumstances, the occasional 
variation in the meaning of words, and the more settled sense affixed to the 
same. There is no essential difference in the fundamental doctrines of the three 
churches ; examples of which" 

The reader has seen to tell a story very different' from that which Dr. Durbin 
would impose upon him. And here is somewhat more : 

Besides the doctrinal variations in the Articles which have been noted in the text, 



41 

III. The third and last topic before me is the Holy Eucharist. 
I proceed then to establish, not by a reference to the opinions of 
individuals, but by an appeal to documentary evidence, as I have 
done all along, the fundamental opposition between Methodism 

the Methodists have stricken out bodily the following doctrinal Articles of the 
Church of England, to wit, the 3d, Of ChrisCs descent into Hell. 8lh, Of the Creeds. 
15th, Of Christ alone without sin, in which the doctrine of regeneration appears. 17th, 
Of Predestination and Election, wherein the school of Tillotson and Burnet 
would be glad to follow them. 18th, Of obtaining Eternal Salvation only by the 
name of Christ, which bears hard upon Methodists, anathematizing those that 
" presume to say that every man shall be saved by the Law or Sect which he 
professeth." 23rd, Of ministering in the Congregation (ecclesia) which is also a 
condemnation of the Methodists and of Wesley's mock ordinations. 26th, Of 
the unworthiness of Ministers, which hinders not the effect of the Sacraments, wherein 
was scented something of the " Opus Operatum.^' 29th, Of theivicked which eat not 
the Body of Christ \in the use of the Lord's Supper"] : the words in brackets are not in 
the Latin title. In addition to all this they have changed the title and first words 
of 32d, Of the marriage of Priests, (Sacerdotum) which corresponds with their re- 
jection of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. They have also altered the title of the 34th, 
" Of the traditions of the Church,'' into " Rights and Ceremonies of Churches^' and the 
passage, "Whosoever through his private judgment, willingly and purposely, 
doth openly break the traditions and ceremonies of the Church," into " the rites and cere- 
monies of the Church to which he belongs." The Church of England knows of 
butj^one Church, "The one Catholic and Apostolic Church," and legitimate 
national branches of the same. See the title-page of the Book of Common Prayer. 
The Methodists consider all religious wor,shipping bodies. Churches, in the proper 
sense, because they call themselves " Churches." Schism is a sin which cannot 
coexist with their vaunted right of " private judgment." It is nevertheless de- 
nounced by the Apostles.* 

Now all these repudiated Articles have been retained by the Church in this 
country. The only changes made in the English Articles, are, 1st, the striking out 
the name of the Athanasian Creed from Art. 8, because that Creed was, to our un- 
speakable regret thrown out of the Morning Service, on account of its damnatory 
clauses ; and that, from the same mistaken tenderness which led our first infor- 
mal Convention to publish a set of Articles which omitted all condemnation of 
Roman Errors : 2d, the 21st Article about " the authority of General councils," 
which, because of its local and civil nature, its words about " the will of 
Princes," it would have been improper to retain in this country. 3rd, We made 
anew Article " of the power of the civil magistrate," which was necessary, 
inasmuch as we had nothing to do with "the King's Majesty." This new Article 
omits saying anything of the Bishop of Rome. Our church does not decide 
where or where not he hath jurisdiction. 

Our Baptismal Offices are identical with the English, but the Methodists 

* See Appendix A. 
4* 



42 

and the Church on this vital point. I stated in my Letter that 
the Methodists rejected those two characteristics of that great 
Mystery, which the Church has always maintained, viz. '^ that it is 
an oblation to God the Father and a real and spiritual commu- 
nication of Christ's Body and Blood to worthy receivers." The 
first, I went on to say, "is recognized in the prayer for the Church 
militant, previous to which the Priest is directed to place ttle alms 
and elements on the Altar ; immediately after which God is be- 
sought to accept the alms and the oblations and prayers." Here- 
upon Dr. Durbin is pleased modestly to remark, not only that I 
have totally mistaken my own Church's doctrine of the Eucharist; 
but he adds further on, 

"I know not whether to suppose your want of discernment or to doubt your 
candour, in your attempt to make the reader of your Letter believe that the obla- 
tion of the elements to God the Father is found in the prayer for the Church 
militant. There is not om word in that prayer to countenance it : but exp7-essly the 
contrary^ 

As I am not in the least concerned about his thoughts of 
my discernment, or his doubts of my candour, I shall pro- 
ceed at once to establish my assertion by proof. Even Bur- 
net,* who very naturally is quite a favourite with Dr. Durbin, 

have essentially altered the same, as I have elsewhere shown. Our Liturgy 
of the Holy Communion varies from the English in containing a fuller 
expression of the doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice ; and in having the 
ancient Invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the Elements, in which feature it 
agrees with the Oriental and some other Liturgies, and differs from the English 
and Roman. The Methodist " Communion Service " is such a perfect monster 
of deformity, that I need say nothing else about it. 

Now when one bears all these things in mind, and hears it said that the differ- 
ences between the Articles and Services which the " Methodist Episcopal 
Church" has taken from the Church of England, and those of the Church, are 
scarcely greater in reality than the differences between those of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church and the Church of England — one is seriously led to inquire 
what, in the eye and mind of Dr. Durbin, does constitute a fact ? 

* The Church never has been satisfied Avith Burnet's Exposition of the Ar- 
ticles. At the Convocation of 1700 the lower house thus expressed their opin- 
ion of it : 

" Whereas a book hath been lately published, entitled, <An exposition of the 
XXXIX Articles of the Church of England, by Gilbert, Lord Bishop of Sarum,' 



43 

(as is also the heretic Whately) with all his latitudinarian bias, and 
his low lifeless Arminianism, might have told him, that, besides 
the 'propriety of the Eucharist's being called a sacrifice in two 
senses which he names, " in two other respects it may be also more 
strictly called a sacrifice. One is because there is an oblation 
of bread and wine made in it.^- (And in the English Liturgy 
of which Burnet is speaking, there is no other verbal oblation 
but that in the prayer for the Church.) " Another respect in which 

which the author declares to have passed the perusal of both the Archbishops, 
and several Bishops and other learned divines, and suggests their approbation 
of it ; and whereas we think it our duty as much as in us lies, to secure the 
doctrines contained in those Articles, from any attempts that may be made 
against them, we most humbly offer to your grace and your Lordships the sense 
of this house, which is as follows : 

1. "That the said book tends to introduce such a latitude and diversity of 
opinions, as the Articles were framed to avoid. 

2. " That there are many passages in the exposition of several Articles which 
appear to be contrary to the true meaning of them, and to other received doc- 
trines of our Church. 

3. " That there are some things in the said book which seem to us to be of 
dangerous consequence to the Church of England, as by law established, and to 
derogate from the honour of its reformation. 

" All of which particulars we humbly lay before your Lordships, praying 
your opinion herein." — 

This document however, of course was not acceptable to the Bishops, for rea- 
sons, which every one acquainted with the history of those times would be at no 
loss to imagine. See Cardwell's Synodalia, p. 704. 

As to the present notorious Archbishop of Dublin (whose name on several 
accounts I have not unreasonably coupled with that of Burnet), his heresy is 
known as widely as his name. In the Appendix to his logic he has distinctly 
taught Sabellianism, thus considering our Blessed Lord little else than an ab- 
straction ; and in his sermons this heresy appears in a still more revolting form. 
Thus he says explicitly, (pp. 51, 52) " We differ from the worshippers of a 
graven image, or of a fire in this, the essential circumstance, that their worship is 

unauthorized, presumptuous, and vain, while ours is divinely appointed » 

But the kind of adoration which idolators pay to their images so far corresponds to 
the Christians' to our Lord Jesus Christ, that we might very reasonably and intelligibly 
describe Him by that termJ" See British Critic, No. 64, p. 396. 

Dr. Durbin and others may rest assured that writers of this stamp give no 
" trouble" whatever to the Catholic-minded members of the Church, beyond the 
fact, which is indeed a solemn one, that they mourn over a church which is 
cursed with such a head. 



44 

the Eucharist is called a sacrifice is, that it is a commemoration 
and a representation to God, of the sacrifice that Christ offered 
for us on the cross." I do not, however, wish to refer to the 
authority of Bishop Burnet, on this or any other doctrine : 

Non tali auxilio nee defensoribus istis 

Tempus eget. ■=«*- 

I have no occasion to look beyond the letter of our Church's 
own formularies. In the first place then, the prayer in question, 
like all other prayers in the Liturgy of the Holy Communion, is, 
in accordance with unvarying Catholic usage, addressed distinctly 
and intentionally to the First Person in the adorable Trinity ; 
consequently, since the prayer does contain an oblation, the offer- 
ing is made to God the Father. Secondly, as to what the word 
" oblations" refers to, I asserted, that it meant the sacramental 
elements on the altar 5 and in proof I bring the fact that the word 
" oblations" was inserted in that prayer, in addition to the word 
^' alms," at the very time the following rubric was prefixed, " Jind 
the Priest shall then place upon the table so much Bread and 
Wine as he shall think sufficient. After which he shall say* Let us 
pray," &:c. Consequently, the intention of the rubric and the mean- 
ing of the word " oblations" are apparent each from the other. 
Thirdly, the custom of the Church in the use of the prayer, goes to 
establish the same. When the offertory is used without a commu- 
nion, (which is obligatory every Sunday in England, though it is 
discretionary with us) the passage is read thus, " we beseech Thee 
most mercifully to accept these our alms, and receive these our 
prayers ;" or, if it should so happen that no alms are collected at a 
communion, it is read " accept these our oblations ;" or finally, if 
the prayer is used without the offertory, when " there are no alms 
or oblations," as it sometimes is, it is read, " We beseech thee to 
receive these our prayers." 

When therefore Dr. Durbin goes on to say : 

" Now leaving out the words ' to accept our alms and oblations, and' when there 
are no alms or other devotions of the people to be offered to God, the elements 
alone remain," 

he is imagining a case which never exists. The word " ob- 

* See Wheatly on the Common Prayer, ch. 6, § 10, III. 



45 

lations" never is omitted at a communion, and cannot be without 
a violation of the order of the Church. 

The "• devotions of the people/' refer to the Minister's dues ; 
and are properly coupled with the alms — both being required to 
be collected in a " decent basin.'^ They are all one with the 
alms except as to their object. This part of the rubric has in- 
deed no significance in the Church in this country, but was once 
observed in England. Wheatly says of it : — 

" It was with an eye I suppose to this difference [that is, among the offertory 
sentences, some of which refer to the poor, and some to the minister of the altar] 
that in the last review there was a distinction made in the rubric that follow 
these sentences, between alms for the poor and other devotions of the people. In 
the old common prayer there was only mention made of the latter of these, as 
appears from its being ordered to be put into the poor man's box. But then the 
clergy were included in other words which ordered that upon the offering days 
appointed every man and woman should pay to the curate the due and accustomed offer- 
ings. . . . Now indeed whilst they have a stated and legal income, the money 
collected at those times is generally appropriated to the poor, not but that where 
the stated income of the parish is not sufficient to maintain the clergy, they have 
still a right to claim their share in these offerings." 

I asserted also that " this oblation of the elements was repeated 
in the prayer of consecration ;" to this it is replied, " there is no 
offering of the elements in the prayer of consecration in the sense 
of a sacrifice to God the Father;" as if an oblation did not carry 
with it, necessarily, the " sense of sacrifice." This blundering 
over plain English, this violence done to language whose mean- 
ing is fixed, consecrated by immemorial usage, ought certainly 
to have suggested to him some '' doubts'' rather of his own " dis- 
cernment and candor" than mine. But no — he goes on to venture 
his rash criticisms upon the prayer of consecration. That prayer 
begins with a recital of the facts, of the "One Oblation once oflered 
on the Cross," and of " the institution of the perpetual memory of 
that sacrifice until His coming again." Then follows the conse- 
cration of the elements, and then the oblation, named as such in 
the margin, as follows : 

« The Oblation. Wherefore Lord and Heavenly Father, according to the insti- 
tutions of Thy dearly beloved Son, Jesus Christ, we, Thy humble servants, do 
celebrate and make here before Thy Divine Majesty, im^/i these thy holy gifts, which 
we now OFFER unto Thee, the memorial Thy Son hath commanded us to make." 

In copying a portion of this passage, Dr. Durbin inserted in 



46 

brackets after the word " memorial/' the words, " not the sacri- 
fice" — as if the oblation unto God the Father, of His holy gifts 
were not the sacrifice commemorative and representative to 
Him of the One Oblation on the Cross ; as if this were not 
the Eucharistic Sacrifice. No, no. Dr. Durbin, with the Liturgy 
before him, has no eyes to see that our Church makes obla- 
tion i^and she would not be a Church if she did not) ; his 
acquaintance with the English language and the English Bible 
is not such as to teach him that " oblation" has the " sense of 
sacrifice ;" and with a recklessness which amazes one, he says 
I have totally mistaken the doctrine of my Church on the 
Eucharist when I affirm that it is an oblation to God the Father ! 
But something more startling remains to be told. Because I 
said — " This oblation, which gives the Eucharist its sacrificial 
character, is a universal rite in the Catholic Church," — he tells 
me: "Here you expressly declare^^ (mark the words) "that you 
hold the same viewoi the sacrificial character of the Eucharist that 
the Roman Catholic Church holds." Admirable theologian ! Will 
not the Protestant Association immediately retain him as their 
prosecuting attorney, after this manifestation of his skill in fixing 
the " mark of the beast" in my forehead ? Because I say the ob- 
lation is a universal rite in the Catholic Church, therefore I hold the 
same view of that rite that the Roman Catholic holds ! And so, I 
suppose, because I say that Baptism is a universal rite among all 
professing Christians except the Quakers, therefore I hold the 
same view of that rite with Methodists and Mormons too ! Dr. 
Durbin's logic is quite as peculiar as his estimation of facts. What 
he means by the Roman Catholic view, he has elsewhere told us ; 
it is, that " each good [R.] Catholic understands the sacrifice of the 
Mass to be a real repetition of the sacrifice of Christ for men.*" 
That I have said one word any where or at any time, to counte- 
nance such a doctrine, is utterly untrue ; and just as untrue is his 
other and kindred assertion (p. 28), that I "defended an oblation 
of the elements as a propitiatory sacrifice as the Romish Church 
teaches.-^ Dr. Durbin seems to have been hurt that any one 
should have thought him capable of making "scandalous misre- 
presentations" of the Oxford divines; but I do not know what more 

* Durbin's "Observations in Europe," Vol. i. p. 72. 



47 

safety they or any one might hope for in his hands than I have 
found. He has here done worse by me than make a "scandalous 
misrepresentation." I earnestly hope it may be true that he 
knows nothing of the subject he has ventured to write about 5 
that he is ignorant of the meaning of the words he has used ; for 
his charge against me is nothing less than what 1 would not 
dare to say except in defence of myself, or rather, of interests 
dearer to me than myself; but I do repeat, it is a palpable untruth. 

It is a sad thing that I should be obliged to proceed to the 
doctrine of the Real Presence, and to speak of it in such a con- 
nection as this. It is almost too awful a subject to discuss here; 
and therefore to spare myself the pain, 1 shall endeavour, as far 
as I can, to confine myself to the words of the Church, in teaching 
her own doctrine. 

But some attention must first be given to two or three of Dr. 
D urbin's characteristic assertions. He tells me that, being unable 
to deny that our communion service is identical with his own, I 
" endeavour to make out a difference by noting a change in the 
Methodist forms, of two words, and the omission of some prayers 
after the sacrament is concluded," which his ministers may say 
or not as they choose. A formal denial of this ^ identity' I never 
indeed made, because there was no occasion for me to deny what 
I thought every body knew was not so. But let it be observed 
that he thus implies the identity of the two services, knowing too 
at the same time, that his service is without the distinguishing 
features of the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, for the day ; the 
creed, the offertory, the prayer for the Church, containing the 
oblation of alms and bread and wine, and the commemoration 
of the faithful departed, the absolution, the Sursum cor da, ("Lift 
up your hearts,'') the proper prefaces, the oblation of the conse- 
crated elements and the invocation of the Holy Ghost upon 
them — besides other parts of less importance. Identity of the 
services indeed! Did any body but he ever imagine such a 
thing, much less assert it ? Neither did I say one word about 
the omission of any prayers, and of course I drew no conclusion 
from such omission. He seems to have had in his mind what I 
said about the alterations and omissions in their baptismal service, 
viz. that they left out the addresses and prayers which asserted 



48 

that the person baptized " is regenerated," — " regenerated by 
the Holy Spirit." This was part of my evidence that the 
Methodists had rejected our doctrine of baptism and of regenera- 
tion ; and this evidence he was pleased so far to overlook as to 
assert (p. 21) that my argument in proof of the departure of 
Methodists from this fundamental article of the faith was not 
predicated of their baptismal service. Thus he denies that I 
noticed this flagrant fault when I did notice it ; and he asserts that 
I noted the omission of prayers in his communion service, when 
I did no such thing. I was concerned with the doctrine of his 
communion service, and not with its diff'erence from ours in other 
respects; and I pointed out a change in one word of prime im- 
portance, which showed the fundamental difference between us 
in respect of doctrine ; and that was the change of the word 
"body" to "death" in the prayer " Grant us therefore gracious 
Lord so to eat the flesh of Thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to 
drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by 
his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood ;" 
in which words both the benefits of the atonement and the life- 
giving grace of our Lord's Body are each asserted. On this Dr. 
Durbin remarks — 

« The diflference is in the use of the word hody by you and dzath by us : [to be 
sure it is]. Now I appeal to the reader if he can detect any difference in these 
words as used in the service, unless he first assume the real presence of the 
body of Christ in the Sacrament V 

And so might a Socinian appeal from the formula of Baptism 
into the Name of the Holy Three, to his reader, and ask, if the 
passage taught the Triune Essence of the Godhead, unless the Tri- 
nity was first assumed ? There is no assumption whatever. The 
v/ords of the prayer are plain. It is not the way of the Church 
to address Almighty God in the language of the rhetorician ; and 
her words in that prayer make nonsense, if they do not teach 
the doctrine of the Real Presence. They do assert it, and the 
Methodists knew it, and therefore they altered the prayer as is 
thus hesitatingly confessed. 

" We with the genuine Protestant party in the Church disbelieve the rml 
presence of His Body in the Sacrament and refer the ivhole to his death, and therefore 
we changed the word to cut off all occasion to claim the authority of the Church 
(i. e. of the ' Discipline') in favour of the real presence." 

Exactly so ; and now I shall show that the Church does make 



49 

a difference between the words body and death ; and does not 
like the Methodists refer the " whoW^ to his death. In the ex- 
hortation giving notice of the Holy Communion there may be 
read as follows : 

" Almighty God our Heavenly Father hath given His Son our Saviour Jesus 
Christ not only to die for us, but also to be our spiritual food and sustenance in 
that Holy Sacrament." 

The testimony of the Homilies to this doctrine is as explicit as 
that of the Liturgy. In the advertisement at the close of the first 
book, we read of the "due receiving of His blessed Body and 
Blood under the form of Bread and Wine.'^ In the Homily of 
the Resurrection it is said : — 

" Thou hast received Him if in true faith and repentance of heart thou has 
received Him, if in purpose of amendment thou hast received Him for an ever- 
lasting pledge and gage of salvation. Thou hast received His Body which was 
once broken and His Blood which was once shed for the remission of sins. 
Thou hast received His Body to have within thee the Father, the Son and the 
Holy Ghost, for to dwell with thee, to endow thee with grace, to strengthen thee 
against thine enimies, and to comfort thee with their presence. Thou hast re- 
ceived His Body to endow thee with everlasting righteousness,* to assure thee of ever- 
lasting bliss, and life of thy soul." 

In the Homily "of the worthy receiving of the Sacrament" we 
are told, 

« Thus much we must be sure to hold, that in the supper of the Lord there is no 
vain ceremony, no bare sign, no untrue figure of a thing absent : But, as the 
Scripture saith, the table of the Lord, the bread and cup of the Lord, the memory 
of Christ, the annunciation of His death, yea, the communion of the Body and 
Blood of the Lord in a marvellous incorporation which, by the co-operation of the 
Holy Ghost, (the very bond of our conjunction with Christ) is through faith 
wrought in the souls of the faithful whereby not only their souls live to eternal 
life,* but they surely trust to win their bodies a resurrection to immortality. The 
true understanding of this fruition and union which is betwixt the Body and the 
Head, the true believers and Christ, the ancient Catholic Fathers,! both per- 
ceiving themselves, and commending to their people, were not afraid to call this 
supper, some of them, the safoe of immortality and sovereign preservative against 
death ; other, a deifical communion ; other, the sweet dainties of our Saviour, 
the pledge of eternal health, the defence of faith, the hope of the resurrection.'" 

And again : It is well known that the meat we seek for in this supper is spiritual 

* The intelligent reader will here perceive the gift of justification through the 
Sacrament faithfully received. 

t Irengeus, Ignatius, Dionysius, Origen, Optatus and Cyprian are referred to 
by name. 



50 

food, the nourishment of our soul, a heavenly reflection and not earthly ; an in' 
visible -meat, and not bodily; a ghostly substance, and not carnal, so that to think 
that -a'ithout faith vre may enjoy the eating and drinking thereof or that that is 
the fruition of it, is but to dream a gross and carnal feeding, basely objecting 
and binding ourselves to the elements and creatures. Whereas by the advice of 
the Council of Xicene, vre ought to lift up our minds by faith, and, leaving these 
inferior and earthly things, there seek it where the^ sun of righteousness ever 
shineth. Take then this lesson, thou that are desirous of this table, of Emis- 
senus, a godly father, that when thou goest up to the reverend communion, to 
be satisfied with spiritual meats, thou look up ivith faith upon the holy Body 
and Blood of thy God, thou marvel with reverence, thou touch it with the mind, 
thou receive it with the hand of thy heart, and then take it fully with thy inward 
man." 

An argument has been drawn sometimes, and lastly by the 
Bishop of Vermont,* from a rubric in the office for •• the com- 
munion of the sick.'' in order to show that the Real Presence or 
^•inward grace"' is not, acording to the judgment of our Church, 
in unit}^ with the consecrated olfering; and that in that 7mhric 
may be seen the wide diiference between us and the Church of 
Rome. I cannot but express my astonishment, at such a con- 
clusion, in spite of my unfeigned respect for the abilities, learning 
and character, of those who maintain it. It is well known that 
the Church of Rome teaches the very doctrine of that Rubric, 
and acts upon it much more than we do ourselves. The decree 
of the Council of Trent is this : — 

"But as to the use. our fathers have rightly and wisely pointed out three 
modes of receiving this Holy Sacranunt. For they have taught that some partake 
of it only sacramentally, viz. sinners; but others spiritually, those to wit, who 
with heart}' desire, eating that consecrated heavenly bread by a living faith 
which worketh by love, discern its fniit and benefit ; lastly, the third partake at 
once sacramentally and spiritually : bur these are they who examine and prepare 
themselves beforehand, that, clad in the wedding garment, they may,"f &c. 

It is on the ground of this spiritual communion without par- 

r * "Novelties which disturb our peace,'" Xo. 3, pp. 34, 35. 

f Sess. xiii. c. 8. Quoad usum autem, recte et sapienter patres nostri tres 
rationes hoc sanctum sacramentum accipiendi disrinxerunt. Quosdam enim 
docuerunt sacramentaliter duntaxat id sumere ut peccatores, alios autem spiri- 
tualiter, illos nimirum. qui, vo^o propositum ilium ccElestem panem edentes, fide 
viva, qua per dilectionem operatur, fructum ejus et utilitatem sentiunt ; tertios 
porro sacramentaliter simul et spiritualiter : hi autem sunt, qui se prius pro- 
bant et instruunt, ut vestem nuptialem induti, &c. 



51 

taking of the consecrated species, that Roman Catholics practise 
*what our writers are wont to consider a great abuse, viz. that of 
leaving communion very much to the Priest, they joining with 
him, mentally and spiritually. This spiritual communion, there- 
fore, surely ought to be the very last thing referred to, whereby to 
"point out the diiference in Doctrine between the two churches ; 
for in this they are agreed, whatever else may be said in other 
respects. 

But to return to the Homilies : I suppose it is quite superfluous 
to ask if any such doctrine as that which they deliver, (which 
was the doctrine of our Reformers) is ever taught by Methodists ? 
Different as it is undoubtedly from those gross conceptions of that 
Holy Mystery which we commonly ascribe to Roman Catholics,* 
and which transubstantiation, and the view of the Eucharistic 
Oblation consequent thereupon, seem to make necessary ; it is 
yet more different from the low and freezing view which Zwingle 
invented, which the Methodists have inherited from him, and 
which, though widely differing from that of Luther, is still the 
only one which is consistent with the latter's famous doctrine of 
justification. Nevertheless Dr. Durbin, who in his own way, 
has a wonderful facility in getting rid of difficulties which would 
baffle and appal any one else, asserts of his own great efforts at 
theological discussion : 

" What I have said will convince you that the doctrine of the two Churches 
[i. e. of the Methodists and the Church] is identical. It now remains for me to 
show what this doctrine is, and tliat you do not hold it ; but that you hold sub- 
stantially the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Sacrament." 

Here are great promises and grevious accusations. Let us 
now examine the means adopted to fulfil the one and to substan- 
tiate the other. He goes on : 

" The true Protestant doctrine of the Sacrament is ' an outward and visible 
sign of an inward and spiritual grace.* — Catechism. A Sacrament then consisteth 
in the ' outward sign' and the thing signified which is * the inward and spiritual 
grace.' These are two, and a child for whom the Catechism was designed can 
easily distinguish them." 

The two last sentences of this passage are very good and very 
true; but let the reader mark the first, which contains what pur- 

* It is a palpable misrepresentation of the Homilies, when persons of Zwinglian 
views quote passages, directed specially against the current errors of their 
time, as if they were written against the doctrine taught in the Liturgy and Cate- 
chism, 



52 

ports to be our Church's definition of a Sacrament, the definition 
of our Catechism ; what he calls the " true Protestant doctrine.'' 
Will it be believed by those persons who have placed confidence 
in Dr. Durbin's statements, " the leaders' meeting" to wit, and 
his other unenviable abettors and "flatterers," in the miserable 
work to which he has lent himself, that their redoubteble cham- 
pion, has, in his quotation from our Catechism, suppressed two- 
thirds of the passage he pretends to cite, and that passage a 
definition! Yes, a definition, every line and letter of which 
is sacred, sacred from its nature as a definition. He has sup- 
pressed the body of a brief doctrinal definition, in order that, 
in his hands, our teaching may appear as " true Protestant doc- 
trine," and so square with Methodism. He has suppressed the 
doctrine of our Church in order to make it out to his ill-informed 
reader, that I depart from her teaching and hold substantially to 
that of Rome. Among all the '' tricks of modern controversy" 
can a procedure like this be found ? Let the lover of justice and 
truth, he only whose opinion I care to ask, let him compare the 
above quotation with what the Catechism does say: 

Q. "What meanest thou by this word Sacrament V 

A. " I mean an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace 
given unto us, ordained by Christ Himself, as a mmns whereby we receive the same, 
and a pledge to assure us thereof."* 

Here it will be perceived that the suppressed portion of the 
definition contains the gist of the whole controversy, which is, 
not as to what either Sacrament may signify, but what they are 
the means of conveying. The definition shows that the outward 
sign is ordained by Christ Himself, as a means whereby we re- 
ceive the inward grace it signifies ; to wit, that water in the 
Sacrament of Baptism is the means whereby, under the minis- 
tration of the Holy Ghost, we spiritually receive the grace of 
regeneration, or, " a death unto sin and a new birth unto right- 
eousness ;" and that Bread and Wine in the Eucharist are the 
means whereby, under the like ministration of the Holy Ghost, 
we spiritually receive the thing signified, viz. the Body and 
Blood of Christ. 

* An erroneous punctuation has crept into some editions of the American 
Prayer Book, viz. the insertion of a comma between the words ' grace' and * given.' 
The punctuation I have followed is the standard one, as may be seen in the 
editions of the Oxford University Press. 



53 

Does this act of suppressing the gist of a doctrinal definition 
in order to subserve the ends Dr. Durbin proposed to himself in 
his discourses and in his Letter, amount to a "scandalous misre- 
presentation ?'' If not, I know not what does, or what can. And 
this very thing did he do in his first discourse ; he then, in like 
manner, withheld that part of the definition which gives the 
differentia, the essential characteristic of the thing defined ; and 
that too, in order to exhibit " the true Protestant doctrine," as 
being that of our Church ; and by contrast to show, that there 
was a large body of our divines who were putting forth views of 
the Sacraments not warranted by the Church, but directly op- 
posed to her authoritative teaching. And though I was aware of 
this fact, though I knew that some had thus been shamefully led 
astray, yet could I not bring myself to notice in my letter to him, 
so flagrant an outrage. It seemed to me to be altogether too serious 
a matter, involving consequences too momentous to his reputa- 
tion, for me even to allude to it in print, without the evidence of 
it in the author's own hand. I should have shrunk from 
speaking of it, even if I had heard it myself. But he has now 
published it to the world, and its fearful consequences he must 
bear, without reproaching any one but himself. 

And now with these facts before him let the reader contem- 
plate the innocent simplicity, the guilelessness of the following 
paragraph : 

" Had you not been of the ' straitest sect of the Pharisees,' which made you 
say in your Letter, ' I of course was not present when you delivered the afore- 
said discourse,' I am sure you would have testified also to the delicacy and 
candor ( ! ) with which I treated all persons and parties, your ' ignorant' in- 
formant notwithstanding — ignorant she* must be or she could not have been 
* scandalized' by my manifest ' misrepresentations.' " 



Having already far exceeded the limits that I proposed to my- 
self, I am forced to bring my remarks to an abrupt conclusion. The 
importance of the subjects discussed, has tempted me to a greater 
length than I should otherwise have gone. I wished this review 
also to possess an interest beyond that which local circumstances 

* I know not what to make of this indelicate, unmanly allusion. Dr. Durbin 
is informed that no such person as he imagines, gave me any accounts of his 
sayings and doings. I have the testimony of his own friends to the truth of what 
I have asserted. 

5* 



54 

may give it. I had other aims, than the exposure of Dr. Durbin. 
I have endeavoured so to exhibit the doctrine to which I have 
vowed submission, as to remove misapprehensions, to assist per- 
sons in difRcuhy, and to reheve those minds from doubt and 
alarm, who are anxious to abide by the teaching of " the Church 
of the Living God, which is the pillar and stay of the truth." 
That teaching is embodied in our Book of Common Prayer ; it is 
Catholic, it is Apostolic, coeval with the Church of Christ. We 
received it not from the private judgment of any man, for we are 
not followers of men. It came to us by inspiration of the Holy 
Ghost. The things which the Apostles committed to their suc- 
cessors, to be handed over to other fahhful men, who might be 
able to teach others also (2 Tim. ii. 2), have come down to us ; 
they are guaranteed to us by the unfailing word of Him who 
promised to be with His Apostles every day until the consum- 
mation of the world. Even "if we believe not, yet He abideth 
faithful ; He cannot deny himself.'' " The gates of Hell never 
can prevail against His Church." They may attack her, they 
may for a time be reared in her midst ; and so may painfully 
engross the vision of many that are endeavouring to set their 
eyes towards Heaven. But these evils will have an end; they 
are fast coming to an end. The bow of hope is already cast 
upon the clouds that have been afflicting us with storms. Sur- 
sum Cor da ! " The Lord is not slack concerning his promise as 
some men count slackness,'' and we may therefore wait with 
patience and with confidence, the fulfilment of His word. On 
this rock we rest. We know that we are in His Church, and so 
partake of His Life and fulness, because she is His Body. We 
know that we are in His Church, enjoying unrestrained access 
to His Holy Word; and therefore will humble minds within her 
obtain a certain knowledge of His truth, because she is "the 
pillar and stay of the truth," the " temple of the Holy Ghost," 
who is the Guide to all truth. Within her pale the light of 
Heaven illumines the all-sufficient record of our Lord's life and 
labours. His Divine discourse, and the teaching of His Apostles ; 
and there " sitting at His feet" we are " taught by Him," and 
learn from the living letter of His Word, " the truth as it is 
in Jesus." " Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words 

SHALL NOT PASS AWAY." 



APPENDIX. 



THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 

The following remarks on this much controverted topic could not be intro- 
duced into the foregoing Review without too great an interference with the 
main subject. They are, therefore, thrown together here, for the considera- 
tion of the thoughtful.* 

In Morals, right is the correlative to ought and duty. We have a right to 
do what we ought to do ; a right to do only what is right. We have no right 
to disobey God ; but we have the liberty ; and if we do so it is at our own 
peril. Consequently, as every man who can, ought to learn the Christian 
faith, so it is his right to do so. In this sense the right of individual judg- 
ment is not opposed to Church authority ; for the Church guarantees the 
right, nor only so, but helps the individual to exercise it. Again, God has 
appointed certain means whereby we may learn His truth ; and as every man 
ought to make use of all those means, so he has no right to neglect any one 
of them. Now, as we learn from St. Paul, God has set up an institution 
which is the " Pillar and Ground of the Truth," " the Church of the living 
God," and man has, can have, no right to turn away his eyes from the es- 
tablished stay of the truth. But he has the liberty to do so, and if he choose 
to act thus, heresy is the inevitable consequence, sooner or later. 

The constant profession of any doctrine by the whole Church from the 
beginning, thus becomes an infallible proof of the truth of that doctrine. It 
is a proof that we are bound to seek after, and which we have no right to 
forego. The belief of truth susceptible of such proof, is a condition of re- 
maining in the favour of God. " Let that therefore abide in you which ye 
have heard from the beginning; if that which ye have heard from the begin- 
ning abide in you, ye also shall continue in the Father and the Son." (1 John 
ii. 24.) 

The present teaching of any sect, or any portion of the Church is, to 
persons under that teaching, prima facie evidence, that it has been heard 
from the beginning. But if, after acting upon it with a good conscience, one 
find that without any fault on his part, it fails in carrying him on to fulfil the 
law of Christ ; he may be assured that there is something wrong in his creed. 

* The July No. of the True Catholic has an article on Private Judgment, con- 
taining thoughts similar to some here expressed, I feel it due to myself to say, 
that what is here offered, was written before I saw the last number of that ad- 
mirable publication. 



56 

Here then there is good reason for " examining himself," to see " whether 
he be in the faith," whether he believes anything which has not, or believes 
not anything which has, been heard from the beginning. And so far as he 
may thus correct his individual faith, he will do so by exercising his private 
judgment, that is, by deferring to evidence, by appealing from the local teaching 
which he has hitherto followed, to Catholicity. Of course he will be bound to 
make a diligent use of the New Testament, in prosecuting so momentous an 
inquiry, in order that he may see wherein the said teaching contradicts that 
holy volume. But here he is met by the difficulty, that all heresies have 
their proof texts, all systems profess to be derived from the Bible. Let him 
then carefully inquire whether the system in which he has been trained adopts, 
or is able to adopt, all the doctrinal statements of the New Testament ; for 
they are all constituent portions of one integral body of divine truth. If it 
do not, it is fundamentally wrong ; it rejects those portions which it does not 
use ; it would not reject them if it could use tJiem. To take an example 
already used (p. 34), if that system does not announce in its regular ordinary 
teaching, that Baptism is " for the remission of sins," (Acts ii. 38) ; that 
by Baptism we are "baptized into Christ's death," (Rom. vi. 2,) and " put 
on Christ," (Gal. iii. 27,) and that in Baptism " we are risen with Him," 
(Col. ii. 12) — it is not simply erroneous or defective ; it is heterogeneous 
to the New Testament ; it is rotten at the core, and cannot be reformed. 

This is, or should be, the first step in bringing any teaching to the in- 
fallible test of Catholicity ; and in most instances this one will be found 
sufficient to detect error. The inspired writings show what was the Church's 
teaching at the beginning, and of course they must be used to know what 
has been taught always. The authentic records of the Church from that time 
forwards, her liturgies and canons, the writings of her doctors and apologists, 
and the lives of the saints, which are the distinctive fruits of her faith — form 
all together an overwhelming testimony to the exactness and integrity of her 
Creed ; an unimpeachable witness to one harmonious body of truth, and 
one way of salvation, as having been authoritatively taught by the Church 
" always and everywhere." The faith of the Church is a fact in history, 
as easily identified at any given time, as her own existence, and much 
more easily than many facts which it would be thought the extremest folly 
to disbelieve. Here then is the second test which is to be applied to any 
teaching that challenges our acceptance, a test to which scripture points us, 
as has been shown ; and one by which the Apostles themselves would have 
their own later teaching tried, by those who heard them. " If lye, or an angel 
from Heaven," says St. Paul, " preach unto you any other Gospel than that we 
have preached Mnio you, let him be accursed." To try any doctrines by these 
tests is surely to exercise the private judgment, to act upon the most fearful 
individual responsibility ; and yet in doing so one would not sit in judgment 
upon the Catholic Church, for all this is but a preliminary step to dutiful 
submission to the faith. Such an inquiry would proceed upon the assump- 
tion, that there is such a body of truth as the Catholic faith, and every step 
in it is an act of obedience. There would be no aim at making private 



57 

interpretations of scripture, but on the contrary a search after that which from 
the beginning has been common to the whole Church. 

There is " one Body" and of course but " one Faith" (Eph. iv. 5); but if 
each individual may have a creed of his own, then it as necessarily follows 
that each individual may be a Church to himself, which is the highest ab- 
surdity. And the mere circumstance that any number of individuals associate 
together because their private opinions agree, does not remove this absurdity ; 
they are not a church, as they would themselves unconsciously confess by 
not thinking guilty of the sin of schism, any who should see fit, for their 
own good reasons, to leave their associates. There must be a church before 
schism can be possible ; and conversely, where that sin is impossible there is 
Tio church. Now is it not a fact that the members of the different protestant 
sects are freely dismissed from one to another as being in " good standing "?" 
which would be absurd if their pastors believed there was a grievous sin 
upon the heads of those thus dismissed. May not a Methodist become a Pres- 
byterian if he think fit, or a Presbyterian a Baptist or Lutheran, and so on, 
without being thought by others to imperil his salvation, or even thinking so 
himself? How often do such transmigrations occur without the charge 
or the consciousness of guilt? How often for mere convenience sake? 
Is not this abundant proof that the possibility of committing schism 
never occurs to the thoughts of such persons ? Is it not proof that that 
sin is impossible on their principles, and consequently, that they confess, un- 
consciously, that they are not in the Church of Christ, and care not whether 
they are or no ? A remarkable illustration of the argument I am here urging 
is furnished by the Rev. Albert Barnes, who, in his truthful* and effective 
publications on our Church, so speaks of the " inborn horror" with which 
every genuine member of the Church regards the sin of schism, as to show 
that he is himself unable to appreciate such a sentiment. It is one which he 

* I use the word " truthful" deliberately, and with more pleasure because Mr. 
Barnes has been assailed as having stated in his first pamphlet " what he knew 
at the time to be untrue." Of course I do not agree with him in all he says. He 
makes some mistakes, and labours under grievous misapprehensions in respect 
of some of our doctrines ; but this he cannot help, because he views our church 
from without, and through the medium of his own system. There is, however 
throughout his essay, proof of his single aim to see what the truth is, and to 
state it with plainness. His main position, and his arguments to sustain it, are 
alike impregnable. In reading his words one should take them in his own 
obvious meaning ; and so understanding him, when he says, ^^ it has never been 
possible permanently to connect Evangelical religion with a religion of forms,** I agree 
with him ; and add, moreover, that a truer word never was spoken. What Mr. 
Barnes means by « Evangelical religion,' never was thought of by the Catholic 
Church. Neither was any such 'connexion' attempted at the Reformation as 
Mr. Barnes thinks. Surely the Baptismal office of the Reformed Church of 
England might have convinced him of that; so also would the Articles, if he did 



58 

never feels ; it is what he, as a Presbyterian, cannot feel. It appears to him 
to be a superstition, or an inexplicable weakness. And yet the schismatical 
temper which individual preferences created in the Church of Corinth, was 
rebuked by St. Paul in such terms as these : " While one saith I am of 

Paul, and another, I of Apollos, are ye not carnal 1 Know ye 

not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in 
you? If any man destroy (marg. transl.) the temple of God, him shall God 
destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are." And he who 
commits schism, or cherishes the temper, does all he can to destroy or atleast to 
injure " the temple of God." One would then be glad to learn from Mr. Barnes 
and those who think with him, what are the principles or antecedent condi- 
tions on which the sin thus denounced by St. Paul is possible 1 The modern 
figment of an invisible Church on earth, supposing its reality, cannot possi- 
bly beafilicted with any such evil. On the Calvinistic hypothesis "neither 
death nor life, angels, principalities nor powers, can separate" a member 
from such a body. Not schism only, but no sin at all could thus avail. It 
surely then would become considerate persons, to give a little more heed to 
this matter than it usually meets with. There is such a sin as schism ; it 
is denounced in the New Testament ; it is one that the members of the 
Church of Christ are liable to. Does it not therefore behoove every man 
who calls himself a Christian, to know what that sin is, and how it may be 
committed, in order that he may shun it, and all temptations to it 1 How 
else is one to know that he is not guilty of this sin, or at the least is not a 
partaker of other men's sins, saying '"I am of Paul or Apollos T" Will 
not some persons exercise their private judgment, and act upon their indi- 
vidual responsibility, in investigating this all important matter! 

not make the 17th, interpreted by the Westminster Confession, the exponent of 
the whole thirty-nine. What is known as the " Evangelical party" in the Church, 
is little more than fifty years old; it is the school of Romaine, Newton, Cecil, and 
Scott. They have nothing to do even with the low church or latitudinarian 
party, which arose after the Restoration, and came into full power under Tillot- 
son and Burnet, with the state to support them, after the Revolution of 1688. 
The " Evangelical" movement was a reaction upon the stupefaction which the 
low church teaching had brought upon the Church. Its mission under God was 
to undo the mischief wrought by the state-school of Tillotson and Burnet ; it has 
succeeded to a great extent and is now expiring. It was able to break down, but 
is wholly impotent at reconstruction upon the original basis of the Church. The 
latitudinarians reaped what they sowed ; they supplied the « Evangelicals" with 
the means to overthrow themselves. They began by trampling on the sacred 
principles of the Church, and at last were put down by those who did their own 
work at a more thoroughgoing rate. Coleridge somewhere says that * no principle 
was ever sacrificed which did not in the end, fully revenge itself by making re- 
prisals ;' the history of the Church constantly bears witness to the truth of this 
remark. 



59 

There is a further thought suggested hy the loud boasts which one hears so 
often of the " right of private judgment," as these words are commonly taken. 
If a man has the right to interpret the doctrinal parts of the New Testament, 
so as to construct for himself a creed, distinct from that which has always 
been professed by the Church Catholic ; has he not also the same right to 
put a new interpretation upon the moral precepts, and so make for himself a 
new ethical code 1 Where is the difference so far as the " right" is concerned? 
The right claimed is, to interpret the Bible each one for himself, and as each 
one chooses ; and ethics are as much a part of the Bible as its doctrines. 
Christian morals, both in their science and practice, are as peculiar to the New 
Law as Christian doctrines. The former are the distinctive fruit of the latter, 
and the two are therefore inseparable ; precept often teaching doctrine, and 
doctrine precept. Why then do not people as boldly avow their right to put 
new meanings into the passages condemning vices, and enjoining good works, 
as they do in respect of those which speak of the doctrine of good works, jus- 
tification, regeneration, the virtue of the Sacraments, the nature of the Church, 
and ministry 1 Sad as it is to know that the " right" so to call it, has 
been freely exercised, though a distinct avowal of it is seldom heard. Symp- 
toms, however, of private interference with the established ethical code of the 
Church, began to appear soon after the discovery of what is called the " right 
of private judgment" ; that is, soon after any individual's interpretation of the 
Bible was assumed to be the same with the Bible itself. Luther in his 
celebrated commentary on the Galatians remarks ; — "Although this is as 
clear as noonday, yet the Papists are so senseless and blind, that out of the 
Gospel they have fashioned a law of love, and out of Christ a law giver, 
who hath imposed far more burdensome laws than Moses himself. But the 
Gospel C?) teacheth, Christ hath come, not to give a new law, but to offer 
himself up as a victim for the sins of the whole world." Singular indeed, but 
quite Luther-like is the contrast in which this passage stands to our Lord's 
Sermon on the mount, and to His other words : " He that hath my command- 
ments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me ; and he that loveth me shall 
be loved of my Father." And again, " when Thomas of Aquin and other 
schoolmen assert that the law hath been abolished, they pretend that the 
Mosaic ordinances respecting judicial affairs, and in like manner the laws 
respecting ceremonies and the services of the temple were after the death of 
Christ pernicious, and on that account were set aside and abolished. But, 
when they say the Ten Commandments are not to be abrogated they them- 
selves Qnderstand not what they assert or lay down. 

"But thou when thou speakest of the abolition of the law be mindful 
that thou speakest of the law as it really is, and is rightly called, to wit, 
the spiritual law, and understand thereby the whole law making no dis- 
tinction between civil laws, ceremonies, and ten commandments." 

The doctrinal bearing of these passages is easily seen. They illustrate 
Luther's great dogma. It does not seem to have entered his mind that 
Christians are under higher obligations to observe the moral law than the 



60 

Jews were, because our gifts will enable us to fulfil it. St. Paul says, 
" Sin" ( mark the word ; it is not law but sin) " shall not have dominion 
over you, /or ye are not under the law but under grace ,■" as much as to say, 
that under the old law sin had dominion ; but under the dispensation of 
grace it need not have, and shall not if we be faithful ; for " the righteousness 
of the law may be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the 
Spirit." 

M hler, to whom I am indebted for these quotations from Luther, cites 
(§18) also the following passage from his " Table Talk :" — "And it would 
not be good for us to do all that God commands, for He would thereby be 
deprived of His Divinity and would become a liar, and could not remain true !" 
Corresponding with all this is the concession of Luther, Bucer, Melanc- 
thon, and others of their party, to the Landgrave of Hesse, to take to him- 
self two wives. 

To conclude : it may be observed that as the moral code which the 
Church has ever maintained does not interfere with any individual's rights, 
but by grace rather helps one to lead a life of purity and holiness ; so the 
Creed of the Church is not opposed to any real private rights, but on the 
contrary secures to one freedom from heresy and schism. 

B. 

Dr. Durbin on p. 7 of his letter says that the Methodists derived their 
ordination from the same source whence we obtained ours. I do not think a 
statement like this at all worthy of any reply. It however furnishes a happy 
introduction to the following extracts from a startling tract lately published in 
Baltimore, entitled "A Letter to a Methodist by a Presbyter of the Diocese of 
Maryland." They will doubtless put intelligent Methodists in the pjossession 
of certain facts of which they must be ignorant. Methodists ought to" recollect 
that they are Wesley ans — the disciples of one man. They ought to remember 
that by him they were first formed into a party in the Church, whence the 
passage to open schism was easy. This man too, whatever may have been 
his merits, was not inspired. He had no credentials to show that he was 
called of God to consummate such a work as the founding of a new church. 
And then they should bear in mind that God once reproved man for making 
even an attachment to inspired Apostles, the excuse for schism. Let them 
calmly reflect upon what follows, and ask themselves what sort of a Com- 
mentary their history furnishes upon this text, " Now this I say that every 
one of you saith, I am of Paul ; and I of Apollos ; and I of Cephas ; and I 
of Christ. Is Christ divided ] Was Paul crucified for you, or were you 
baptized in the name of Paul. For while one saith I am of Paul ; and another 
I of Apollos ; are ye not carnal V 1 Cor. i. 12, 13 ; iii. 4. 

Wesley's Ordinations. 

" On this point rests the validity of the Methodist ministry. If Wesley had 
authority to ordain Dr. Coke a Bishop, then it is conceded that the Methodists 
have a lawful ministry and lawful sacraments ; but, if Wesley had no such 



61 

authority to ordain him, then his ordination of Dr. Coke was a nullity, and the 
Methodists have neither a lawful ministry, nor lawful sacraments ; and as there 
cannot be a Christian Church without a laivful ministry and lawful sacraments, 
it will, in that case, necessarily follow, that what is called the "Methodist 
Church," is not, as such, a part of the Church of Christ. 

Now, lest you might suppose that some wrong is done to the Methodists in 
the issue here made, I shall quote the frst section of their "Book of Discipline," to 
prove that the entire validity of the Methodist ministry is made by themselves to 
rest upon Wesley's ordination of Dr. Coke. It is as follows: 

« On the Okigik of the Methodist Episcopal Church.''^ 

" The preachers* and members of our Society in general, being convinced 
that there was a great deficiency of vital religion in the Church of England in 
America, and being in many places destitute of the Christian Sacraments, as 
several of the clergy had forsaken their churches, requested the late Rev. John 
Wesley to talie such measures, in his wisdom and prudence, as would afford them 
suitable relief in their distress. 

"In consequence of this, our venerable friend, who, under God, has been the 
father of the great revival of religion now extending over the earth by means of 
the Methodists, determined to ordain ministers for America; and, for this pur- 
pose, in the year 1784, sent over three regularly^ ordained clergy : but preferring 
Episcopal mode of Church government to any other, he solemnly set apart, by 
the imposition of his hands and prayer, one of them, viz. Thomas Coke, Doctor of 
Civil Law, late of Jesus College, in the University of Oxford, and a Presbyter of 
the Church of England, for the Episcopal office; and having delivered to him 
letters of Episcopal orders, commissioned^ and directed him to set apart Francis 
Asbury, then general assistant of the Methodist Society in America, for the same 
Episcopal office ; he, the said Francis Asbury, being first ordained deacon and 
elder.§ In consequence of which, the said Francis Asbury was solemnly set 
apart for the said Episcopal office by prayer, and the imposition of the hands of 
the said Thomas Coke, other regularly ordained]! ministers assisting in the sacred 
ceremony. At which timeTJ the General Conference held at Baltimore, did 

* At this time, the preachers were considered only lay-preachers, and according 
to the uniform advice of Mr. Wesley, had declined administering the sacraments. 
In 1778, a few of these lay-preachers, in Virginia, undertook to ordain each other, 
thinking thereby to get the power of administering the sacraments ! but, by a vote 
of one of the Conferences, this ordination was declared invalid! (Life of 
Wesley by Coke and Moore, chap. 3, sec. 2.) 

I These " regularly^'' ordained clergy, were clergy of the Church of England. 
They were not ordained by Wesley. The Methodists here themselves draw the 
distinction between ^'regularly ordained clergy" and Wesley's ordinations. 

t Lest it might be supposed, that Wesley had " commissioned" Dr. Coke, m 
these (so-called) '^letters of Episcopal orders,^' to "set apart^' Mr. Asbury for the 
" same Episcopal office," it is proper to state that no such " commission" is given 
to Dr. Coke in said " letters." Where is this " commission" to be found? 

§ As some might think from this language, that PTesZey had " first ordained 
[Mr. Asbury] deacon and elder," it should be known, that Asbury received no 
ordination from Wesley. He was only a layman, when Dr. Coke came to 
America ; and Dr. Coke ordained him a deacon, elder, and superintendent, or, (as he 
afterwards called himself,) a Bishop, in the course of a few days ! (See Lee's 
" Short History of the Methodists," p. 94.) 

II One of these " regularly ordained" ministers was a German minister named 
Otterbine ! (Lee's History, p. 94.) 

t This is not true. The General Conference did not at that "time" receive 
Coke and Asbury as Bishops, as will be shovcn hereafter. 

6 



62 

unanimously receive the said Thomas Coke and Francis Jsbury as their Bishops, 
being fully satisfied of the validity of their Episcopal ordination." 

Thus you will perceive that the validity of the Methodist ministry is made, by 
the Methodists themselves, to depend on the validity of Dr. Coke's ordination by 
Wesley. 

Let us then seriously inquire, where did Wesley obtain the Authority to ordain 
Bn Coke 1 

It certainly was not born with him ; for authority to ordain a minister of Christ 
is born with no man. 

He could not have obtained it from any temporal power; for all the kings and 
governors of the earth combined cannot ordain a minister of Christ, nor confer 
the authority to ordain one. 

Was this authority conferred on Wesley at his ordination? — Plainly not: be- 
cause the authority for ordaining in the Church of England, (of which Wesley 
was a member,) is confined exclusively to the order of Bishops, and Wesley was 
not consecrated a Bishop, but only ordained a Presbyter. As no such authority 
was then conferred on Wesley ; he did not obtain it when he was ordained. 

That you may perceive at a glance, what authority was conferred on Wesley 
when he was ordained, I shall transcribe the very ivords used by the Bishop who 
ordained him. You may find them in the Office for " The ordering of Priests," 
in the Book of Common Prayer ; they are as follows : 

" Receive ihe Holy Ghost for the office and work of a Priest in the Church of 
God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands: whose sins thou 
dost forgive, they are forgiven ; and whose sins thou dost retain they are retained : 
And be thou a faithful Dispenser of the Word of God, and of His holy Sacraments : In the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." 

By this form, every Presbyter of the Church of England is ordained ; of course, 
Wesley was thus ordained ; and you may thus perceive, at once, that no authority 
to ordain was then committed unto him. 

But here your preachers meet us with the argument, that Bishops and Pres» 
byters are one and the satne order of ministers; and, therefore, Wesley being a 
Presbyter, was also a Bishop, and therefore had authority to ordain — and this, too, 
in the teeth of the fact, as I have just proved, that no such authority was given 
to him at his ordination ! Whether Bishop and Presbyter be the same order, is a, 
point I shall consider hereafter; at present I shall content myself with showing, 
that this argument will not avail the Methodists in the least, because t 

If Wesley were a Bishop, because he was ^, Presbyter, \hexi Dr. Coke must also 
have been a Bishop, since he was a Presbyter when Wesle}^ "laid his hands on 
hini." And if Dr. Coke was already a Bishop, what did Wesley make him by 
ordaining him'? Not a Bishop, surely ; for he was one already, if Presbyters 
and Bishops be the same order ! What then 1 He must have made him an 
oflicer higher than a Bishop — an officer unknown to the Church of God ! Be- 
sides, if Dr. Coke, being a Presbyter, was, therefore, a Bishop, he had the same 
right to ordain Wesley, as Wesley had to ordain him ! 

This argument, I consider so unanswerable and conclusive, to prove the inva- 
lidity of Coke's ordination, that I might here let the subject rest; but, before I 
close shall again advert to it, for reasons which will then appear. 

Havmg thus disposed of one of the chief arguments by which the Methodists 
attempt to show that Wesley had authority to ordain, I shall now proceed to 
consider their other great argument, namely, that Wesley had a " Providential 
call" to ordain. 

When Wesley sent out Dr. Coke, he gave him the following instrument of 
writing, which " The Book of Discipline," above quoted, calls his " letters of 
Episcopal orders .•" 

"To all to whom these presents shall come, John Wesley, late fellow of Lincoln 
College, in Oxford, Presbyter oi Xhe Church of England, sendeth greeting: 
" Whereas, many of the people in the Southern Provinces of North America, 

who desire to continue under my care, and still adhere to the doctrine and discipline 



63 

of the Church of England, are greatly distressed for want of ministers to admin- 
ister the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, according to the usage 
of the same Church : and, whereas, there docs not appear to be any other way of sup- 
plying them with ministers — 

" Know all men, that I, John Wesley, think myself to be providentially called 
at this time to set apart some persons for the work of the ministry in America. 
And therefore, under the protection of Almighty God, and with a single eye to 
his glory, I have this day set apart as a Superintendent, by the imposition of my 
hands* and prayer, (being assisted by other ordained ministers,) Thomas Coke, 
Doctor of Civil Law, a Presbyter of the Church of England, and a man whom I 
judge to be well qualified for that great work. And I do hereby recommend 
him to all whom it may concern, as a fit person to preside over the flock of 
Christ. In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and seal, this second 
day of September, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and 
eighty-four.f Johjn- Wesley." 

Whatever may be meant by the phrase, "providentially called," in the above 
document, Wesley has saved us the trouble of finding it out, for he expressly 
tells us why he thought he had this "providential call," namely, because, there does 
not appear to be any other way of supplying them ivith ministers. 

That this was Wesley's true reason for thinking himself "providentially 
called" to undertake this business, is made still plainer by his letter, dated 
"Bristol, 10th September, 1784," (only eight days after he "laid hands" on 
Dr. Coke,) addressed to " Dr. Coke, Mr. Asburj'', and our brethren in North 
Ameriea,"^: in which, on adverting to the above transaction, he says: 

"If any one will point out a more rational and scriptural way of feeding and 
guiding these poor sheep in the wilderness, I ivill gladly embrace it. At present 1 
cannot see any better method than I have taken." 

Whether Wesley, then, had a "providential call" to ordain, depends upon the 
fact, whether there was "awj/ other way" to obtain ministers for God's Church, 
(for the Methodists had not yet left the Church,) than his taking upon himself the 
authority to ordain Dr. Coke ; because, if it can be plainly shown that there was 
an " other way," then it is evident, on Wesley's own ground, that he had no 
such "providential ealL" 

Rightly to solve this question, it will be necessary to advert to the position of 
the American Church at that time. Before these "United States" were separated 
from Great Britain by the Revolution, the Church of England had been planted 
in several of them, and the jurisdiction over these Churches and their ministers 
was committed to the Bishop of London. After the Revolution, consequently, 
when this country was separated from Great Britain, the jurisdiction of the 
Bishop of London was, practically, at an end, and the American Church was 
thus left without an available ecclesiastical head. Some wise men of late, among 
the Methodists, have affected to think, that the Church in this country was 
destroyed, because it had lost its Bishop ! It was no more destroyed, than the 
Church in New York, or Maryland, would be destroyed, should she lose her 

* This " imposition of hands" was not done in a Church, openly before the 
people, but in Wesley's hed-chamber in Bristol! It soon, however, got noised 
about, that Wesley had made a Bishop ! (though there is not a word of the kind in 
these " letters of Episcopal orders," as they a.re called.) The Rev. Charles Wes- 
ley, who was not in the secret, on hearing of it, wrote the following epigram : 

" So easily are Bishops made, 

By man's, or woman's whim; 
Wesley his hands on Coke hath laid, — 
< But — who laid hands on himl" 

f Reprinted from a tract written by Dr. George Peck, a Methodist preacher. 

± Lee's Short History, page 91. ^ 



64 

Bishop, by death, degradation, or resignation. The remedy '^as the same in. 
both cases, to elect another, and have him consecrated by lau-fid authority . And this 
was done by the Presbyters of the American Church: they elected four of their 
number to the office of Bishop; and these four proceeded to England, where 
three of them -u'ere consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and one of 
them in Scotland by the Bishops of the Church in that country. The successors 
and spiritual descendants of these /our, deriving their authority from the blessed 
Eedeemer, through "the imposition of the hands'' of His laicfuJ Bishops, have 
multiplied to twenty-tico. with a prospect of further increase ; and their authority 
is acknowledged by more than twelve hundred clergy-, who derive their ordination 
from them and their predecessors. — Here, then, li-a.s an " other way'"' of obtaining 
a supply of ministers, than by a Presbyter undertaking to ordain another Presby- 
ter a Bishop in his chamber! And, as \Yesley makes his "providential call" 
depend on the fact of there not being "any other way," and this proof that there 
"was another way, makes it plain to a demonstration, that Wesley had no "provi- 
dential call'' to ordain whatever! It was just seventy-three days after this ordination 
of Dr. Coke, that Dr. Seabury was consecrated in Scotland, to be the Bishop of the 
Church in Connecticut. Had Wesley, therefore, waited but seventy-three daysjhe 
would have seen that Gun was providing a lawful ministry for His Church, and 
that he did not need the aid of the superintendent of a Methodist society to do 
the work for Him. Strange — passing strange — it is, it never should have crossed 
Wesley's mind, that God could provide ministers for his Church, without his in- 
strumentalit}' !* Strange, too, when there were, at least, one hundred "regularly 
ordained" Presbyters of the Church remaining here, (after she had been sepa- 
rated, by the Revolution, from the Mother Church of England.) that, if there 
were to be a "providential call'' to ordain ministers, it did not occur to Wesley 
the "call" would have been given to one of them instead of him. Four of them 
were " called," as I have sho-um, by those possessing authority to call and ordain 
ministers for the Church of Christ, namely, by the lawful Bishops of the 
Churches of England and Scotland; thus showing, beyond the power of contra- 
diction, that God had not forsaken His Church, and that Wesley's thinking (for 
he tells us he only tho-aght so,) that he had a "providential call," was only the 
imagining of a fallible man, trusting too much to his own narrow view of the 
circumstances in which he was placed. And thus, sir, is scattered to the winds, 
the other grand argument for the validity of Wesley's ordinations. 

Hitherto, you will have observed, I have argued this question on the ground 
taken by the Methodists, that Wesley ordained Dr. Coke, to be a Bishop — by a 
Bishop meaning the first and highest officer of the Church of God, and that 
Wesley himself was such a Bishop. But this we deny, because, 

1. Wesley, in the above (so called) "letters of orders," simply styles himself 
"a Presbyter of the Church of England." 

2. In that document, he does not say a word about having ordained Dr. Coke 
to be a Bishop, but merely that he "set him apartf as a Superintendent." Now 
what did Weslev mean, by this phrase of setting him " apart as a Superintend- 
ent 1" 

In the letter, above quoted, addressed (not to Bishop Coke, but) to " Dr. Coke, 

* Wesley saw this when it was too late. Dr. Coke, in his letter to Bishop 
White, says: "He (Mr. Wesley) being pressed by our friends on this side of 
the water, for ministers to administer the sacraments to them, (there being very 
few clergy of the Church of England then in the States,) went farther. I am 
sure, than he would have gone, if he hsid foreseen some events which followed." 

f " Ordination is not to be confounded T^-ith the designating or setting apart of a 
person to the work of the ministry ; for in strictness, any one may do this for 
himself, or it may be done for him by his parents, guardians, &c., and involves 
nothing but what any layman may perform : whereas ordination is the actual corn' 
onunication of authority from a legitimate source, to execute those functions which 
appertain to the several orders of the ministry." (Staunton.) 



65 

Mr, Ashury, and our Brethren in North America,^^ is_the following paragraph, which 
explains the whole transaction : 

« I have appoinled Dr. Coke and Mr. Francis Asbury to be joint Superintendents 
over our Brethren in North America." 

Now, I beg you to examine this language narrowly. 1. Wesley does not say 
he ordained Dr. Coke and Mr. Asbury, but simply that he " appoint ed^^ them. But, 
by using the word " appointed," did Wesley mean that he ordained them ] Cer- 
tainly not; because the same word (appointed) is used respecting them both, 
and Wesley did not ordain Asbury, for Asbury was at that time in America, 
and had been for several years previously. Nevertheless, Wesley "appointed" 
him a Superintendent, as well as Coke ; and as ordination was not necessary to 
constitute Jtsbury a Superintendent, neither was it necessary to constitute Dr. 
Coke one ; and it is evident that, as Asbury was not ordained, Coke could not 
have been, (as the same word, " appointed," is used respecting them both,) and 
that Wesley did not mean to say that he had ordained them, when he said that he 
" appointed" them. Indeed, the idea of ordaining a Superintendent of a merely 
human society* is a thing utterly unknown to the Scriptures and the Church of 
God. It is precisely the same thing, as if a Presbyter now was to ordain a Super- 
intendent for the Sunday School Union, or a Bible Society. Wesley was too 
sound a divine to adopt any such absurd notion. He was himself the Superin- 
tendent of the Methodist Society in England, but had never been ordained to that 
office ; and if Wesley could be a Superintendent without ordination, the same 
could be done by Coke or Asbury without ordination. No, sir, there is not a 
particle of evidence to prove that Wesley ever "ordained" Dr. Coke. Coke was 
placed precisely on the same footing with Asbury, (who was Silayman) — Wesley 
"appointed" them both Superintendents of the Methodist Society in North Ame- 
rica; and the only difference between them is this: that in "appointing" Dr. Coke, 
Wesley did it in rather a more formal manner, by placing his hands on his head, 
and praying over him ! 

But (2d,) did Wesley by " appointing" Coke and Asbury to be "Superintend- 
ents" intend to make them " Bishops 1" Lee, in his "Short History," gives the 
following account of these men first calling themselves Bishops, in the minutes of 
their Conference : (pages 127-8.) 

" In the course of this year (1787) Mr. Asbury reprinted the general minutes ; 
but in a different form from what they were before. The title of this pamphlet 
was as follows : 

" A form of discipline for the ministers, preachers, and members of the Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church in America; considered' and approved at a Conference 
held at Baltimore in the State of Maryland, on Monday, the 27th day of Decem- 
ber, 1784. * * * * 

"In this discipline there were thirty-one sections, and sixty-three questions, 
with answers to them all. 

" The third question in the second section, and the answer, read thus : 

" Q. Is there an)'- other business to be done in Conference 1 

"A. The electing and ordaining of Bishops, Elders, and Deacons. 

"This was the /i?-sUime that our Superintendents ever gave the title of Bishops 
in the minutes. They changed the title themselves tvithout the consent of the Conference!" 

Thus it appears that a fraud was practised by one of these Superintendents to 

* At that time, there was no such thing in existence as a " Methodist Church.'* 
Wesley, and the Methodists themselves only spoke of themselves as the Metho- 
dist society, or societies, or sometimes as the Methodist Connexion, and that Wesley 
was their founder and father. Of course, it was only a human society, and nothing 
more : indeed, at that time, it did not claim to be any thing more ; and the idea, of 
ordaining a Superintendent, or any other minister, for a human society, is absurd.. 
Lee says, (page 47,) " We were only a religious society, and not a Church." At 
page 94, he says: "At this Conference we formed ourselves into a regular 
Church." How a religious society could be turned into a Churchy he does not 
inform us. This was after Coke came to America. 

6* 



66 

get himself recognized as a Bishop — No less a fraud than altering the minutes of 
the Conference! and this, too, by endeavouring to make it appear to the world, that 
they had been recognized as Bishops by the Conference since the first foundation of 
"the Methodist Church," in 1784! whereas the Conference had only recognized 
them as Superintendents — the office to which Wesley had appointed them — and 
this alteration of their title, for this purpose by themselves, took place in 1787 ! 

Lee, in his "History," goes on to remark: 

"At the next Conference they asked the preachers if the word Bishop might 
stand in the minutes ; seeing that it was a Scripture name, and the meaning of 
the wwrf Bishop was the same with that of Superintendent." 

Observe here, the reason assigned for assuming the title of Bishop. It was 
not that Wesley had ordained them to that office. Coke knew better than that ! 
But because the ward " Bishop" mea7it " Superintendent!" So it also means an 
" overseer," but is every overseer therefore a Bishop 1 So the word " Presbyter" 
means " an old man ;" but is every old man therefore a Presbyter? So the word 
*' Deacon" means " a servant ;" but is every servant therefore a Deacon 1 It is 
evident from this transaction, that Coke and Asbury did not dare to assign Wes- 
ley's " appointment" as the ground for their assuming the title of the chief officer 
in the Church of God ; otherwise they would not have assigned such a school- 
boy reason for their unjustifiable act. 
^ Lee, in his " Histoiy," then goes on further to remark : 

"Some of the preachers opposed the alteration, and wished to retain the for- 
mer title, [that of superintendent;] but a majority of the preachers agreed to let 
the word Bishop remain ; and, in the annual minutes for the next year, the first 
question is : ' who are the Bishops of our Church for the United States V " 

Thus was consummated one of the most startling frauds of modern times; and 
the v/hole " Methodist Church" has ever since, been led to believe, that Wesley 
ordained Dr. Coke a Bishop, and then " commissioned" him to ordain Asbury a 
Bishop, and that these two were actually recognized and called Bishops by the 
Methodist Conference since the first foundation of their " Church," in 1784 ! 
And, what is more, this fraud is actually perpetrated to the present day; for in 
the " Book of Discipline," (chap. 1, sec. 1,) it is said expressly: " Francis Asbury 
•was solemnly set apart for the said Episcopal ofBce by prayer, and the imposition 
of hands of the said Thomas Coke, other regularly ordained ministers assisting 
in the sacred ceremony. At which time, the General Conference, held in Balti- 
more, did unanimously receive the said Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury as 
their Bishops, being fully satisfied of the validity of their Episcopal ordination!" 

Now when did this " imposition o-f hands" on Mr. Asbury by Dr. Coke take 
place 1 Mr. Lee informs us, in his " History," (p. 94,) that it took place at the 
Conference, which began in Baltimore on December 27, 1784; whereas it was 
not until 1787, that the minutes were altered; and it was not until the "next 
Conference" afterwards, that the Superintendents were " received" as Bishops ! 
and when the Conference did consent to "receive them as Bishops," it was not 
done "unanimously," but was the act of only a "majority" of the preachers. 
And thus are the Methodists imposed upon until this very hour ! 

It is enough to make one shudder, when contemplating the manner in which 
these men attempted to thrust themselves into the chief office of the Christian 
ministry. The recollection of it appears to have grievously weighed upon Dr. 
Coke's conscience, when he afterwards so earnestly wrote to Bishop Seabury to 
ordain him and Asbury Bishops! and to Bishops White and Seabury to ordain 
their preachers over again ! And well it might weigh upon his conscience ! The 
wonder is, it did not drive him into a mad-house ! Wesley himself tells us the 
effect it had upon him, when he heard of Asbury claiming "to be a Bishop ! He 
tells us it made him shudder — and well it might. He thus writes to Asbury: 

John Wesley to Fra^'cis Asburt. 

''London, September 20, 1788. 
"There is, indeed, a wide difference between the relation wherein you stand 
to the Americans, and the relation wherein I stand to all the Methodists. You 



67 

are the elder brother of the American Methodists ; I am, under God, the father of 
the whole family. Therefore, I naturally care for you all, in a manner no other 
person can do. Therefore, I, in a measure, provide for you all ; for the supplies 
which Dr. Coke provides for you, he could not provide, were it not for me — 
were it not, that I not only permit him to collect, but support him in so doing, 

" But, in one point, my dear brother, I am a little afraid both the Doctor and 
you differ from me. I study to be Utile, you study to be great ; I creep, you strut 
along; I found a school, you a college. Nay, and call it after your own names! 
Oh, beware ! Do not seek to be something ! Let me be nothing, and Christ be 
all in all. 

« One instance of this, your greatness, has given me great concern. How 
can you, how dare you suffer yourself to be called a Bishop ? 

" I shudder, I start at the very thought ! Men may call me a knave, or a/ooZ, a 
rascal, a scoundrel, and I am content; but they shall never, by my consent, call 
me a Bishop ! For my sake, for God's sake, for Christ's sake, put a full end to 
this ! Let the Presbyterians do what they please, but let the Methodists know 
their calling better. 

" Thus, my dear Franky, I have told you all that is in my heart ; and let this, 
when I am no more seen, bear witness how sincerely 

" I am your affectionate friend and brother, 

John Wesiey."* 

This letter is a remarkable document. Four years had nearly elapsed since 
his "appointment" of- Dr. Coke. In the mean time Wesley had had time for 
reflection. He had time for a further and more deliberate investigation of the 
authority of Presbyters to ordain; and however he might, for a season, have been 
blinded by the sophistical book of Sir Peter King, so as to suppose Presbyters 
and Bishops were the same order, yet now he gives his more mature judgment, 
that they were not — for that is the meaning of the last clause in his letter, where 
he speaks of the Presbyterians. It is well known that the doctrine of the Pres- 
byterians is, that Bishops and Presbyters are the same order; and many of them, 
even to this day, do not scruple to call themselves Bishops. In reference to this 
fact it is, that "Wesley says in the above letter, " Let the Presbyterians do as they 
please, hut let the Methodists knmv their calling better." That is, let the Presbyterians, 
if they please, call themselves Bishops, but let not the Methodists follow their 
example — let them know their calling better than to call themselves Bishops, 
when they are not. 

Now, let it be remembered, that the question before us is : Did Wesley, when 
he « appointed" Coke and Asbury "Superintendents" of the Methodist Society, 
ordain them Bishops 1 

It is certain he did not. This letter to Asbury, in the very plainest manner 
possible — words cannot be plainer — declares that Asbury was no Bishop; and 
yet Coke did for Asbury precisely what Wesley did for Coke — he laid his 
hands upon him, and prayed over him : and if, in Wesley's judgment, this impo- 
sition of hands and prayer by a Presbyter did not constitute Asbury a Bishop, 
neither could they, in Wesley's judgment, have constituted Dr. Coke a Bishop; for 
Coke's authority to ordain was the same as Wesley's, (which was no authority 
at all,) both of them being Presbyters of the Church of England ; and, therefore ,it is 
proved clearly and undeniably, that in appointing Coke and Asbury to be "Super- 
intendents" of the Methodist Society, Wesley did not ordain them Bishops. 

Notwithstanding their high-handed assumption of the title of Bishop, still these 
men were uneasy. The fact was still staring them in the face, (and the world 
knew it,) that Wesley had only "appointed" them to be Superintendents of the 
Methodist Society under him ;]• and, however they might claim to be Bishops 

* From Moore's Life of Wesley, vol. ii. page 285. 

f In his letter "appointing" Dr. Coke a Superintendent, Wesley says, "Whereas 
many of the people in the Southern Provinces of North America, who desire to 
continue under my care," &c. In his letter to Asbury, he says: "The supplies 
which Dr. Coke provides for you, he could r^ot collect, were it not for me were 



68 

— and, however they might alter the name in the mimites — still Bishops of the 
Church of God they were not ! Something, then, must be done to get around 
this matter, and convince the people, 1. That Wesley was a Bishop ; 2. That 
Wesley ordained Coke a Bishop ; and, 3. That Coke ordained Asbury a Bishop ! 
One would suppose, when Asbury had Wesley's letter, (dated September 20th, 
1788,) in his pocket, declaring that he was no Bishop, and that Sisbury was no 
Bishop, that this would not be a very easy matter to accomplish. But these men 
did not stick at trifles ; they had already fabricated a new set of minutes for their 
"Church" to get the title of Bishops, and they were determined to go all lengths 
sooner than fail in their project to be accounted real Bishops. The Bishops of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States had now for some time been 
consecrated; Coke and Asbury knew that their commission was authentic ; that 
they had been consecrated in England and Scotland by lau-fid Bishops ; and that 
the Church had received them as Bishops, in a regular succession from the 
Apostles. Coke and Asbury knew all this ; and alongside of these men, as 
Methodist "Superintendents" they felt their littleness, although they had assumed 
the name of what they so much coveted ! They knew that they had the 7iame of 
a Bishop, and that was all ! The}'- had no succession to point to ! Let us see, 
then, how they proceeded to get the reality. At one of their Conferences, held 
in the year 1789, Mr. Lee, in his " History," informs us (p. 142,) ihat 

" The Bishops (that is, Coke and Asbury) introduced a question in the annual 
minutes, which Vv^as as follows : 

" Q. Who are the persons that exercise the Episcopal office in the Methodist Church in 
Europe and America ? 

" A. John Wesley, Thomas Coke, and Francis Asbury, by regular order and 
SUCCESSION ! ! 

" The next question was asked differently from what it ever had been in any of 
the former minutes, which stands thus : 

'•' Q. Who have been elected by the unanimous suffrages of the General Con- 
ference to superintend the Methodist Connexion in America? 

"A. Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury." 

The drift of these questions and answers can be seen at once. Their object is 
to make it appear, (1.) That it was the Confere-nce and not Wesley, which 
"appointed" them Superintendents ! and (2.) To make it appear, thatW'esley was 
a I3ishop, and ordained them Bishops, and that thus they have a regular succes- 
sion from a lawful Bishop ! Now, let it be remembered, that these questions 
were introduced by Coke and Asbury themselves ! They saw the full drift of 
them, although the Conference might not have seen it! Calmly and without 
prejudice review this proceeding; and then, taking it in connection with the/arf, 
that they fabricated a new set of minutes to get the name of a Bishop, and with 
the fact that Asbury had in his possession Wesley's letter declaring that he was 
no Bishop, and i\\dilAshury was no Bishop — I say, calmly and without prejudice 
review this proceeding, in connection with these facts, and then say, whether 
modern or ancient times afford a more daring or unhallowed scheme, than this 
presents, of men undertaking to usurp the office and authority of a Christian 
Bishop ! 

These facts, also, prove that Coke and Asbury knew that Wesley did not ordain 
them Bishops, when he " appointed" them Superintendents of the Methodist 

it not that I not ovxlj permit him to collect, but support him in so doing." The 
following question and answer were adopted at the Conference in 1784. « Q. 2. 
What can be done in order to the future union of the Methodists 1 A. During 
the life of the Rev. John W^esley, we acknowledge ourselves his sons in the 
Gospel, ready, in matters belonging to Church Government, to obey his com- 
MA>'Ds," &c. (Lee's History, p. 95.) Mr. Lee afterwards observes: "This 
engagement to obey Mr. Wesley's commands, in matters belonging to Church 
Guvernme-nt, was afterwards the cause of some uneasiness." No wonder. Wes- 
ley's letter to Asbury when he set up for a Bishop, was w^ell calculated to make 
him uneasy 



69 

Society under him. But, if there be any doubts remaining on this point, they will 
be removed by the perusal of Dr. Coke's letters to Bishops White* and Seaburyf 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 

1. It will be observed, in both of these letters, that Dr. Coke does not, for a 
moment, claim to be a Bishop. 

2. His letter to Bishop White shows, that he exceeded the authority given him 
by Mr. Wesley, and that Mr. Wesley disapproved of his proceedings. 

3. In his letter to Bishop Seabury, he asks Bishop Seabury to ordain him "a 
Bishop of the Methodist Society !" Thereby acknowledging that Wesley, when 
he " appointed" him a Superintendent, did not ordain him a Bishop, of that society! 

4. In his letter to Bishop Seabury, he asks Bishop Seabury to ordain Mr. As- 
bury a Bishop of the Methodist Society; thereby acknowledging that his ordina- 
tion of Asbury to be a Bishop was only a mock ordination ! 

5. In his letter to Bishop Seabury, asking for the admission of the Methodist 
preachers into the Protestant Episcopal Church, Dr. Coke says, that he ''knows 
that they must submit to a re-ordination.''' Of course, the ordination they received 
from him \vas good for nothing, otherwise there would have been no necessity 
for their being ordained over again. 

6. These letters prove, beyond question, that Coke knew and believed, that 
Bishops alone possiessed authority to ordain ; that no such authority was possessed 
by Presbyters (otherwise his own ordinations would have been valid, for he was a 
Presbyter;) and, consequently, that he knew and believed that Presbyters and 
Bishops were not the same order. 

7. These letters, too, show conclusively, what was Dr. Coke's opinion of Wes- 
ley's ordinations (as they are called)— that is, that they possessed no validity what- 
ever ; and, therefore, that when Wesley " appointed" him a Superintendent of 
the Methodist Society, he did not "ordain" him a Bishop of the Church of God. 



The following paragraph is the close of a Letter addressed to me by Dr, 
Durbin in the public prints, and which, for good reasons, I determined not to 
notice. The matter referred to is not of much consequence, and I would 
overlook it entirely, did I hot know that some persons have regarded his 
statement as true ; and have naturally drawn conclusions against those prin- 
ciples of the Church with which Dr. Pusey's name is so nobly associated. 

"It was deemed desirable by my brethren, that the capital questions in dis- 
pute should be distinctly stated, as the general judgment of the Church in Eng- 
land and America is, that Puseyism is Romanism in disguise. The proceedings 
of the existing Church authorities in England which resulted in the suspension of 
Dr. Pusey from the ministry, and the resignation of Mr. Newman, are sufficient 
evidence of their views." 

" Evidence" ! There is no truth in the statement. No Church authorities 
have acted in the premises. Dr. Pusey has not been suspended from the 
ministry ; and if it be meant that Mr. Newman has resigned his ministry, (in 
which case only it would be evidence of his doctrinal unsoundness,) that also 
is untrue. A person acquainted only with the first principles of Church 
polity, never could have been guilty of such an assertion, as Dr. Durbin has 
here hazarded ; and that too, in respect of a case which was correctly reported 

* Published in Bishop White's Memoirs. 

f The letter to Bishop Seabury is similar. The autograph is in the possession 
of.the Rev. Dr. Seabury of New York. 



70 

even in the newspapers. He needs to be informed that a clergyman can be 
suspended from his ministry only by his diocesan. But the Bishop of Oxford 
has never interfered with Dr. Pusey, even so much as to give him a rebuke. 
The latter was suspended only from the privilege of preaching within the pre- 
cincts of the University, for two years ; and that by the Vice Chancellor, acting 
in his capacity of supreme civil magistrate of the city and University of Oxford, 
and without paying any regard to the provision of the statute under which he 
acted, that the ' offence should be examined in open court.' Dr. Pusey was 
punished without having any distinct charge brought against him. No one 
in authority has dared to say, that his famous sermon contained one word con- 
travening any doctrinal statement of the Church of England. Neither the 
Vice Chancellor, nor his lieutenant, Professor Garbett, have ventured so far 
as this. The title of the statute under which Dr. Pusey suffered (it is wrong- 
to say "punished," for a man cannot be punished, properly speaking, unless 
he is guilty of an offence,) is " Be offensionis et dissentionis materia in con- 
cionibus evitanda,-^^ i. e. " about avoiding matters of offence and dispute in 
sermons." Such matters, the statute states, are those which are " contrary to, 
or at variance with, the publicly received doctrine and discipline of the Church 
of England ;" and the statute closes with these words, "6^ praedictorum crimi- 
num suspecius pads reus habeatur,''^ i. e. "and one charged with the afore- 
said offences may be accused as a disturber of the peace.^'' 

Such was the pretended offence. At most, it was a civil offence, and ille- 
gally punished by a civil magistrate, without giving the accused a trial, or a 
hearing. In a published note, the Vice Chancellor says, " Dr. Pusey has 
my full authority for saying, that he has had no hearing." Dr. Pusey is 
still a priest in the Church of England, Canon of Christ Church, and 
Regius Professor of Hebrew ; and is free to preach any where he may be 
invited, beyond the Vice Chancellor's jurisdiction. It may be as well to 
state here in addition, that that officer, and those who have acted with him, 
have lately received a rebuke from the Convocation which has covered them 
with shame. 

Mr. Newman's resignation was simply of the vicarage of St. Mary's. He 
wished to make it two years before, in order to relieve his persecutors from 
the sin of indulging their personal animosity against him ; but he was dis- 
suaded from it by his Bishop. His meek forbearance, however, did them no 
good ; and he at last, voluntarily, gave up the living of St. Mary's, together 
with the chapel annexed, which he had founded himself. 



THE END. 



ERRATA. 

Page 28, top line, for means read mean. 

Page 30, 3d line from the bottom, for justifiable read justified. 

Page 33, in the quotation near the bottom, for " The Homily says they 
taught the doctrine of Sacramental justification ;" read, " The Homily says 
they taught the doctrine of 'justification by faith alone ;' you say they taught 
the docrine of ' Sacramental justification.' " 

Page 34, in the 9th line from the bottom, erase the words " their minds 
are"— 

Page 49, 1st line in 2d quotation, for has read hast. 

Page 52, 6th line from the top, for redoubieble read redoubtable. 



THE 



FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES OF THE CHURCH 



VINDICATED FROM 



ALL AFFINITY WITH METHODISM: 



IN A REVIEW 



OF THE LETTER OF THE REV. J. P. DURBIN, D. D., ASSERTING 
THEIR IDENTITY. 



BY WM. HERBERT NORRIS, M. A., 

RKCTOR OF ST. JOHN's CHURCH, CARLISLE, PA. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
GEORGE & WAYNE, 26 SOUTH FIFTH STREET. 

1844. 






m^^L^^o!;^RE^ 



i02l2j2B40 9 



